


Paper Birds

by theinvisiblequestion



Category: Castle, The Pretender
Genre: Backstory, Crossover, F/M, Family, Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Minor Character Death, Minor Character(s), NuGenesis, Original Character(s), POV Multiple, POV Third Person, The Centre (the Pretender), Tragic Romance, Wordcount: Over 50.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-29 22:48:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 33
Words: 51,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinvisiblequestion/pseuds/theinvisiblequestion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After discovering the truth behind her mother's murder, Kate Beckett convinces a willing Jarod and an unenthusiastic Parker to help her destroy the Centre once and for all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The door swung on its hinges when she knocked. The bolt was busted open, and Parker eased the door open with her hip, keeping her gun raised in case whoever had busted the lock was still hanging around. The apartment on the other side was clean and tidy, but not upscale by any means. She checked the hallway first, but didn’t bother with the bedroom. She didn’t want surprises, but she also didn’t want to waste time.

A small, fairly old TV sat on a small table across from a sofa. In front of the sofa lay a man in a pool of blood that was rapidly staining the beige carpet. Aside from the blood, he looked like he’d fallen asleep and rolled off the sofa. Parker bent down to inspect the body. There were no marks aside from the double gunshot to the chest that had killed him. There was nothing else of interest in the living room, so Parker went into the kitchen.

A mug and a spoon sat soaking in the kitchen sink. The coffee pot was half full. An appointment reminder was stuck to the fridge, and a corner of red peeked out from below the refrigerator.

Parker slid the notebook out and flipped it open. There wasn’t anything special at first glance—just the standard newspaper clippings and a few lines of highlighting—so she tucked it under one arm. She looked over the kitchen again, but there was nothing else left for her. She was about to walk back out of the apartment when she heard the door burst open and half a dozen sets of heavy footsteps. “NYPD!” a woman’s voice shouted. Parker rolled her eyes. This was _just_ what she needed right now.

A woman in heels and Kevlar rounded the corner into the kitchen, her gun raised. “NYPD, put your hands up!” she demanded. Parker put her hands in the air and the notebook fell to the floor. She shook her head and swore she’d get her revenge on Jarod for this.

* * *

“So,” said Kate, slapping a file on the table as she walked into the interrogation room. “What were you doing in Mr. Reynolds’ apartment?”

“Looking for someone,” the woman with the bright red lipstick replied.

Of course she was. Wasn’t everyone in this case? “And Mr. Reynolds was in your way, so you decided you’d put a bullet to his chest?”

Miss Hot Lips Parker looked annoyed. “I didn’t shoot. He was dead when I walked in.”

Kate knew this was a woman who could kill a man without a second thought. In fact, that’s probably what she did for a living. “You refused to give your first name, Miss Parker. Any reason why?”

“I could tell you who shot him, though,” Hot Lips said, completely ignoring Kate. “I could solve your entire case right now.”

That was a pretty bold claim, coming from a woman who wore short, tight skirts, leather jackets, and four-inch heels. “Really, Miss Parker? You think you can solve an ongoing multiple homicide without knowing the details, and still manage to convince me you didn’t kill anyone?”

“Oh, I’ve killed people, honey,” Hot Lips said. “But not anyone in your—what did you call it?—ongoing multiple homicide.”

“Do you recognize this man?” Kate asked, sliding a sketch across the table. Hot Lips froze for a fraction of a second, but Kate’s detective eyes didn’t miss it.

“He looks familiar. Why?”

Kate took the sketch back and slid it into the manila folder. “He was seen going to Mr. Reynolds’ apartment almost every night around seven for the past few weeks.”

“He’s not your killer, if that’s what you’re asking.” Hot Lips folded her arms across her chest, one eyebrow arched.

“Then you know him?”

“I know your killer,” Hot Lips said.

A knock came at the door. Kate exchanged glares with her suspect before slipping out the door. Ryan held the ballistics report. “It wasn’t her gun that killed Reynolds.” He looked past Kate’s shoulder at the brooding woman in the interrogation room, cringing a little.

Kate frowned. There was a whole lot Hot Lips wasn’t saying—and not just her name—and Kate had a feeling the information was related to the case. “Thanks.” She went back into the interrogation room, trying to paste a poker face over her scowl.

“What’s the ballistics report, Detective?” Hot Lips asked. “Let me guess. I didn’t kill Reynolds.”

Kate didn’t answer.

Hot Lips smiled. “You want me to stay and tell you who your killer is? How to find him?” She paused. “Forget it. You’d never catch him.”

Kate raised an eyebrow. “You seem pretty sure of yourself, Miss Parker.”

Hot Lips stood out of her chair, bringing herself to Kate’s height. “Even if I told you, you wouldn’t be able to scrape enough evidence to convict him. Your killer is untouchable, Detective.” Kate fought to keep her eyes locked with the other woman’s. “But you already know that, don’t you?” She walked out of the interrogation room, leaving Kate speechless.

When Kate finally regained her wits and walked out after Hot Lips, the other woman was standing in the middle of the hallway, fingers squeezing her temples. She turned as Kate edged closer. One word fell from her bright red lips: “Johanna.” It sounded like a question, dribbled out against its speaker’s will.

Kate froze. Her pulse jumped, and she could feel panic setting in. Hot Lips looked confused for a moment before she regained her composure and walked out of the precinct.

Kate turned and bolted for the ladies’ room. What was _that_? Kate felt her chest tighten, drowning her in the air that was suddenly too thin. She pressed her forehead against the cold metal of the stall, took out her phone, and dialed Castle’s number. Her finger hovered over the _send_ button. Castle was writing, and what would Kate say, anyway? Nothing that wouldn’t make him worry.

Kate walked out of the stall, splashed cold water on her face, and went back to work. The rabbit hole could wait.

* * *

Parker found Broots at the vending machine, trying to coax a bag of Funyuns out. She hit the machine and the bag fell to the retrieval slot.

Broots jumped. “Miss Parker!” he said nervously, picking the Funyuns out of the machine and avoiding her gaze. “I was just, uh, getting—”

“I want you to search the archives for any mention of the name Johanna,” Parker interrupted.

“Of course,” he said. “Uh, any particular reason—”

“Just do it,” she sneered, and walked away. Sydney knew more about this whole Inner Sense thing than anyone. Maybe he’d know who Johanna was.

Sydney was in his office, as usual; he rarely worked in the labs now. He put down the book he was reading when Parker walked in. “Miss Parker,” he said. “How was New York?”

“Well, I didn’t catch your Monkey Boy,” she sneered, dropping into the chair across from Sydney. “Vanished, as usual.”

“And the notebook?”

“Lyle confiscated it the second I got back,” Parker said. “The usual nonsense, anyway.” Parker hadn’t been able to keep one of Jarod’s red notebooks since shortly after Carthis, when she and Lyle were set against each other in a race to find Jarod.

Sydney nodded, studying Parker thoughtfully. “Something else is bothering you,” he said.

Parker scowled at a wall. “I heard them again,” she said.

“What did you hear?” asked Sydney.

Parker began to pace slowly. “Johanna,” she said.

“What do you think it means?” Sydney asked. Always the psychiatrist.

“I don’t know.” Parker pinched the bridge of her nose. “Broots is searching the archives.” Parker snorted sarcastically. “Maybe it’ll help me find Jarod.”


	2. Chapter 2

When he went on writing sprees like this, Rick Castle deliberately erased the flow of time. He shut himself in the office, blacked out the windows, covered the clocks, and used a nifty little widget to hide all the clocks on his computer. The desk in the office was littered with Pop-Tart wrappers, dirty plates and bowls, and one very filthy coffee mug.

He’d finally finished the writing that needed done, and he realized he was famished. He dug his phone and keys out of his desk drawer and dropped them into his pocket. He had no idea what time it was, and so when he stepped outside, he was surprised to find the sun high in the sky: lunchtime. It was a nice day, and he’d been cooped up so long (somewhere around two days, judging by how many times he’d had to eat and sleep), he decided to forgo a cab and instead started down the street for a nearby Italian place.

Two blocks from his apartment, a man in a leather jacket was reading _Green Eggs and Ham_. Intrigued, Castle slowed his pace to study this strange man, who looked up and asked, “Excuse me. I hate to bother you, but would you happen to know where I could find green eggs and ham?”

Castle looked at this stranger curiously for a moment, and then laughed. “You know what, I do.” They’d only just met, but Castle’s writer instincts told him that there was a story to this man who read children’s books on sidewalks. “Come on. I was on my way to grab a bite, anyway.”

“Really?”

Castle nodded.

“I’m Jarod Woodson, by the way.” He extended his hand, and Castle shook it heartily.

“I’m Rick Castle.” He flagged down a cab and gave the driver the address of a little breakfast-and-lunch diner in Midtown. “You know, I used to read that to my daughter when she was a kid.”

Jarod smiled. “It’s an interesting book. Seuss writes some very interesting things for a doctor.”

“He’s not a doctor,” Castle said. “Just a writer. Didn’t you ever read them as a kid?”

“I didn’t have much freedom of reading when I was growing up.” Jarod smiled sadly, and Castle noticed his fingers tighten a little around the children’s book in his lap.

Castle’s mind was already racing to write the story of this stranger. “Strict parents?” he guessed.

Jarod hesitated. “Something like that.”

 _Parents a touchy subject_ , Castle noted. ‘Something like that’ was nearly always a way of saying ‘it’s very painful and nothing at all like that’. Castle knew he only had a short time with this stranger, so he moved to a different topic. “Do you often read children’s books on street corners?”

Jarod nodded. “I find them very fascinating. Have you read _Curious George_?”

“Only about a thousand times,” Castle said. He’d read that one to Alexis, too.

Hope lit up Jarod’s face. “Maybe you can help me. Do you know who the man in the yellow hat is?”

Castle grinned. Alexis had asked him the same question. “He’s just the man in the yellow hat. He doesn’t have a name,” Castle explained. “Sorry.”

Jarod seemed disappointed. “Well, thank you anyway.”

Castle nodded, casting around for more conversation. “Any other good reads lately?”

Jarod smirked. “A few. Einstein’s _Relativity_ was a bit dry.”

“Did you read that one for fun?” Castle joked.

“I was studying astrophysics.”

Castled wondered if Jarod was also joking. “You’re a physicist?”

Jarod shrugged. “Sometimes.”

Castle narrowed his eyes.

“What do you do?” Jarod asked.

“I’m a writer. I write crime novels.”

“Anything I might have read?” Jarod asked.

“Well, there’s the Derrick Storm novels…”

Recognition sparked in Jarod’s eyes. “Oh, I think I read a few of those.”

“And my new series, the Nikki Heat novels.”

“Of course—Richard Castle.” Jarod nodded. Castle was surprised and relieved that Jarod didn’t suddenly go into fanboy mode. Castle welcomed human company after his solitude, but it would be a few hours yet until he was prepared to deal with rabid fans.

The cab stopped then and let them out. Castle paid the driver and ushered his new friend into the restaurant. It was busy, but most of the patrons were finishing their lunches. Castle found a little booth in the corner and ordered a couple of waters along with two Seuss specials. The waitress raised an eyebrow, but jotted the order on her notepad anyway. “So what do you do, Jarod? When you’re not an astrophysicist.”

Jarod shrugged. “Oh, this and that. Right now I’m working as an independent contractor. Doing some refurbishing on a few old buildings around town.”

Contractor on old buildings with the last name Woodson. Castle wondered if that was a coincidence. His inner plot machine rejected the idea of a coincidence. “So you’re a contractor, Mr. Woodson? Interesting.”

Jarod smiled. “It’s not the most exciting job I’ve had, but I like it.”

“What’s the most exciting job you’ve had?” Castle asked.

Jarod thought for a moment. “I was a test pilot once.”

“A test pilot, an astrophysicist, and now you’re a contractor? How’d you manage that?”

Jarod shrugged. “I’m a quick study.”

The waitress came back with their waters. “Your food should be done in a few minutes.”

“Thanks,” Castle said before turning back to Jarod.

“What about you?” Jarod asked. “What was your most exciting job?”

Castle thought about saying his ‘job’ as a consultant with the NYPD was the most exciting, but that wasn’t going to move the conversation where Castle wanted it to go. “Being a father,” he answered instead. It was the most exciting job he’d ever had, but not in the same way as being a test pilot.

“That would be an adventure, I’m sure.” The smile on Jarod’s face was too forced to hide the fathomless emptiness there.

“What about your family?” Castle asked. “You seem like a family kind of guy.”

Jarod shook his head. “I was taken from my parents as a child. I escaped about six years ago, and I’ve been searching for them ever since.”

“I’m sorry,” Castle said, suddenly having second thoughts about wanting to know this man’s story.

Jarod shook his head. “They’re still alive. At least, my mother and sister are. I’ll find them someday.”

“I hope you do,” Castle said. He was saved from having to come up with a change of topic by the arrival of green eggs, ham, and green milk.

Jarod looked curiously at the milk. “Is it safe?” he asked. “It looks… interesting.”

“It’s just food dye. Were you a germophobe once, too?” Castle joked.

“Virologist,” Jarod corrected seriously, sniffing the milk. He tasted it, and then picked up his fork and tried the eggs. “They just taste like eggs,” he said, perplexed. “They’re very good, though.”

Castle nodded. “That’s the idea.”

Jarod looked slightly disappointed, but he ate the rest of his meal with almost as much gusto as Castle. When the waitress brought around the check, Castle paid it, waving off Jarod’s attempts to pay his share.

“The company and the conversation was payment enough,” Castle said. “I’ve been off-grid writing for two days. Human contact is much appreciated.” _Speaking of off-grid_ … Castle pulled his phone out and turned it on. He’d completely forgotten when he’d left the loft.

“Well, thank you, Mr. Castle.”

“Seriously, call me Rick.” Castle scribbled his cell number on the back of the receipt and handed it to Jarod. “If you run across any more interesting things in children’s books, call me.” Castle grinned and picked up his phone. He had three missed calls, all from Gina. He cringed. Calls from Gina were never a good sign.

“Problem?” Jarod asked.

“Just my publisher,” Castle said, shrugging. “Probably asking where my manuscript is.” He stuck his phone back into his pocket.

“Well,” Jarod said, standing. “Thank you for the educational meal, but I’ve got to get to work.”

Castle stood and offered Jarod his hand. “Astrophysics, right, right. Or was it woodworking?” He smirked, and they shook hands. “Good to meet you, Jarod,” Castle said.

“You too,” Jarod answered, shaking Castle’s hand firmly.

Castle walked out of the restaurant behind Jarod, only to find that Jarod had vanished into the ether.


	3. Chapter 3

Parker sat at her desk, staring at the portrait of her mother that lived there. Broots was still working on finding out who Johanna was, and Parker hadn’t seen Sydney since the previous morning.

Someone knocked on her door. “What?” she snapped.

Sydney came in, closing the door gently behind him and taking the seat in front of the desk.

“Oh, the hermit’s out of his cave?” Parker remarked.

“I just needed to do a little research,” he said.

“Well? Did you find anything?”

“I can’t tell you exactly what was said,” Sydney prefaced. “But I can tell you that your mother mentioned a woman she called Jo. Catherine didn’t mention her until our later sessions, and she never said who the woman was, other than a friend.”

“Jo… Short for Johanna?” Parker guessed.

“It’s possible,” Sydney said, shrugging. Another knock sounded at the door before Sydney could say anything else.

Broots came in, a folder clutched in his sweaty, tense fingers.

“Please tell me you have _something_ ,” Parker said.

“Well,” he said nervously. “I found, uh, twelve different Johannas in the system.” He handed her the folder, which contained nothing but a list of the names. 

She sneered and thrust it back at him. “This doesn’t help me. I need to know who they are.”

“Well, if you had any parameters, I could, uh, narrow it d-down,” Broots answered meekly.

“Just get me some profiles,” Parker said.

Broots nodded and shuffled out of the room. Parker sat back in her chair moodily, wishing she had a cigarette.

* * *

“What have we got?” Kate asked, striding into the morgue.

Lanie eyed Kate for a minute or so before launching into her usual report. “Like I said, your boy was shot twice in the chest.”

“One shot wasn’t good enough?”

Lanie shook her head. “Not exactly. Either one of the shots would have killed.”

“So the killer wanted to make sure he was good and dead?” Kate asked.

“I think it's an M.O.,” Lanie answered. “Parkins and Reiner were killed with the same double-gunshot.”

Kate blinked. “You think this was a serial killer?”

Lanie put up her hands. “It just looks an awful lot like some recent bodies that have crossed my table.”

Kate frowned.

“And what about you, girl?” Lanie said, folding her arms across her chest. “You look an awful lot like some bodies that cross my table.”

Kate blinked. “I’m fine,” she said, shrugging.

“Mm-hmm,” Lanie said in obvious disbelief.

Kate’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She answered without even looking at the screen. “Beckett,” she said automatically.

“Don’t sound so happy to hear from me,” Castle’s rich tenor rumbled in her ear.

“Hey, Castle,” Kate said, rolling her eyes.

“Where are you?” he asked, and she could hear the sultry notes in his voice.

“At the morgue.”

Castle suppressed a cough. “Seriously? Working?”

“The dead don’t die on schedule,” Kate said.

“Too bad. Do you have time for dinner later?” Castle asked.

“Maybe,” Kate said.

Castle’s smile was audible. “It’s a date, Beckett.”

She hung up and Lanie, while obviously not satisfied, seemed appeased enough for the moment that Kate could make an easy escape. “I’m going back to the precinct. Text me if anything else comes up.”

* * *

At the precinct, Kate couldn’t focus. She sat at her desk and tried not to stare too much at the hallway past Interrogation. That Parker woman had said she knew who the killer was.

She forced her eyes back to the murder board for the ninetieth time. Something was missing, something that linked the victim and the killer, but the only thing Kate could think of was Reynolds’ nightly visitor. Despite what Hot Lips Parker said, it was just too coincidental that Reynolds’ estimated time of death was between six and eight in the evening.

“Are the gremlins drawing lines yet?” Castle murmured behind her before dropping into his chair next to her desk. It was almost eight o’clock, and the precinct was mostly empty.

Kate frowned at the board. _Your killer is untouchable, Detective. But you already know that, don’t you?_ “The connection is there, but I haven’t found it yet.”

“Tell me all about it over dinner,” Castle suggested. “Maybe a fresh pair of eyes’ll help.”

“It’s here, I know it is,” Kate said, rubbing her forehead.

“It’ll be here tomorrow.”

“He’s killed three people already, and he doesn’t show signs of stopping here.”

Castle leaned across the desk. “You’re not going to be any help if you drop dead of starvation, either.” He sounded like he was making light, but Kate could see his worry in the lines of his face.

They exchanged stares for a long moment before Castle made a goofy face. Kate rolled her eyes and collected her jacket.

* * *

Beckett refused to let him drive, even though he wanted to take her somewhere new. Something was off, and Rick worried about her. She was tense, and it seemed so sudden. Sure, he hadn’t seen her or talked to her for two days, but she’d seemed so happy the last time he’d seen her. He never wanted to go on one of his writing sprees again; he didn’t even know when this change had started.

Rick directed her to parking and then led her into the little diner. Without the board or a car to occupy her, she seemed to droop in the seat like she was exhausted. “You look tired,” he commented.

“I’m fine,” she said. Even her shrug seemed weary.

“Maybe you should sleep in tomorrow,” he suggested. “I’m sure Gates will understand.”

Beckett shook her head. “I’m fine,” she insisted.

Rick didn’t really believe her. After they’d finished dinner, Beckett dropped him off at the loft.

“Promise me you’ll go home and sleep,” Rick said.

“I’m fine, Castle. I can take care of myself.”

“Just promise. For me?”

Beckett rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay. I promise.”

As she drove off, Rick felt something twist like a knife in his stomach. She was keeping things to herself, stuffing them down and trying to tamp a lid on them. He couldn’t help but wonder if she’d found another rabbit hole and wasn’t telling him.

* * *

Jarod called around one in the morning. Parker knew it was him before she even answered; he was the only person in the world with the uncanny ability to know when she couldn’t sleep. “What?” she answered, her usual sharpness dulled by fatigue.

“I’m surprised you didn’t come after me yesterday,” Jarod said.

“No, I was held up by the lovely people at the NYPD,” she sneered. “Thanks for that.”

“That wasn’t me,” he told her. “Cross my heart. I heard Lyle’s back in town.”

Jarod had sent her twin off on an elaborate little goose chase that had kept him running in circles for almost two weeks. “Yeah. He killed Reynolds.”

“He _what_?”

Parker shook her head. She had a tendency to forget that Jarod was still very sensitive to people being murdered. “What do you know about Johanna?”

“You ask as if you expect me to answer, Miss Parker. I think you forget how many questions you’ve failed to answer.” He sounded resentful, and she knew why: she’d been hunting him for six years now. The chase was beginning to wear, even for her.

“I don’t know the answers, and even if I did, I couldn’t tell you.” After so many years of these games, volleying back and forth like this was second nature. “Have you heard from Ethan?” she asked. It was a standard question in their game, a legal move since the last time they’d seen each other. They both cared about the half-brother they shared, but he’d vanished into thin air just before the debacle at Carthis. Neither of them had heard from him, though Parker knew he was still alive: she trusted her Inner Sense that far.

“No,” he answered. “Have you heard anything?”

“He’s out there, but I haven’t heard from him.” This was as friendly as any of their conversations ever really got, and Parker knew it was time for the ending move.

“And here we are again,” Jarod said. “Six years, and still no answers.”


	4. Chapter 4

Broots stood in Parker’s doorway, shifting from foot to foot like a four year old who needed to pee.

“If you’ve got something useful, spit it out, and stop doing the Potty Dance.”

Broots walked up to her desk, a folder in one hand. He looked pleased with himself. “There was a Johanna from New York in the Centre archives who was listed as a potential candidate for Prodigy.” Broots handed Parker a photo of a dark-haired woman. “Johanna Beckett was her name.”

“Beckett?” Parker asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“Nothing. What else?”

“Well, she, uh, she was a lawyer in Manhattan, but she was killed fourteen years ago.”

“And?” Parker prompted.

“That’s all I have.”

“Well, then, I guess you have work to do, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course.” Broots shuffled out. Parker looked at the photo in her hand. The woman looked a bit like the detective. Was it possible that the detective herself had been screened for the Pretender anomaly as a child? Parker tucked the photo into her pocket.

* * *

_Johanna_ , they whispered. Ethan had no idea who Johanna was, but her name woke him every night now. Lately the voices had been less like whispers and more like muffled yells in his mind. He should call his brother or his sister, ask if they knew who Johanna was. Ethan had avoided contacting either of his half-siblings because he was on the run, as he had been for the last year, and he knew contacting them could put them in danger. But he didn’t know who Johanna was, and every instinct told him she was important.

He put it off for almost two weeks, but his Inner Sense kept repeating the name, and he finally gave in and found a pay phone to call from.

“What?” Parker answered.

Ethan took a deep breath, trying to calm his breathing enough to speak. “I have to ask you something.”

“Ethan!” she breathed. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Running,” he said, looking over his shoulder. The warning bells in his mind grew louder. “I’m fine.”

“You didn’t leave a note,” Parker said. She sounded worried.

“I didn’t have time.” Ethan knew his sister wasn’t as sensitive as he was; his Inner Sense had just barely saved him. “Who is Johanna?”

“Your Inner Sense?” Parker asked.

“Did you hear it, too?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “I think her name is Johanna Beckett. I don’t know much about her, but I’m working on it.”

“She’s important,” Ethan said.

“Have you called Jarod?”

“I can’t,” he said. He could feel the panic of his Inner Sense screaming at him to run. “I shouldn’t have called you. I have to go.” He heard her start to say something as he hung up, hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders, and ran.

* * *

Broots looked way too pleased with himself. “Well, I searched through the Centre archives, and apparently, Johanna Beckett worked on a ‘special project’ with a colleague from Delaware. I did a little digging, and there wasn’t much information on this project, because it was apparently very secret, and because it was never finished.”

“Why?”

“Well, her colleague was murdered before the project was finished. The only thing I could find about the project was a couple of letters from Johanna, but I think they wrote in a code, because I can’t make heads or tails of anything.”

Parker handed the photos back to Broots. “You might be good for something after all,” she said. “But I want to know what this project was, and if my mother might have been involved.”

Broots nodded. “I’ll do my best.” He ducked out of the room, and Parker rubbed her temples. There had to be some reason she heard that name, and she was determined to find it.

* * *

Alexis sat in her favorite coffee shop, books piled on the table in front of her, writing a report. The place was packed, typical of a Saturday. She’d come in almost as soon as the shop opened to secure her table.

She’d just put the finishing touches on the body of her paper, and was about to start in on the conclusion when a dark-haired guy asked if he could share her table. His backpack told her he was a student, and he looked about the right age. She nodded and he thanked her with a smile. Alexis noticed he didn’t let go of his backpack; it was almost as if he expected he would have to jump up and leave at any moment, and he couldn’t possibly leave it behind.

“I’m Alexis, by the way,” she said. He seemed nice, and she thought he looked like someone she’d seen around campus.

“Ethan,” he replied. He squeezed his eyes shut like he had a burning headache.

“Are you okay?” Alexis asked.

Ethan nodded. “I’m alright. It’s just a headache.” Alexis noticed he was unusually soft-spoken.

“Do you need an aspirin? I’ve got some.”

Ethan shook his head, blinking and raising his head again. “No, but thanks. I’m allergic.”  
Alexis nodded and went back to her paper, but something about her new table mate intrigued her too much for her to properly focus. He dug a battered brown notebook out of his backpack and studied its pages. “Good reading?” she asked when he looked up and frowned thoughtfully at the walls.

He smiled at her joke. “A habit,” he said. “Re-reading a few things I wrote.”

“Are you a writer?” Alexis asked.

“No,” Ethan said. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Someone in particular?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s complicated.” He frowned at the notebook. “I don’t know much about her. I don’t even know if she’s still alive.”

“Maybe I can help. It’s a big city, but someone’s go to know something, right?”

“My sister tells me her name is Johanna Beckett.”

Alexis froze. “Beckett?”

“Yes. Do you know her?” Ethan asked eagerly.

“No. I think my gram used to know someone named Johanna, but she’s been dead for years.” It was close enough to the truth, and Alexis hoped he hadn’t noticed her moment of panic. Alexis had a very strong desire to call her dad right then and there, but she could call him later; he’d be there this evening, and Ethan looked like he could disappear into the aether if Alexis so much as blinked.

“Dead?” Ethan looked disappointed.

“Well, she might not be the same Johanna,” Alexis offered. “D’you know what? I bet Google could tell us something.” She pulled her laptop out of her backpack, woke it up, and headed straight for her browser. She typed in Johanna Beckett New York City, wondering if anything would actually come up. She searched the news section, but nothing useful came up.

“Do you have access to the news archives?” Ethan asked. “Maybe the obituaries, in case she’s the Johanna your grandmother knew.”

Alexis nodded, and she and Ethan searched through news archive after news archive until an article came up about Johanna Beckett’s murder case. Alexis knew who it was by the photo—she’d seen a photo of Kate’s mom once or twice—before she even read the article.

“She was a lawyer,” Ethan said, skimming the article. “Worked with less fortunate or neglected cases. Victim of gang violence.”

Except she wasn’t, Alexis knew. She’d been murdered by a professional hit man.

“This is only about her death,” Ethan said. He sat back, rubbing at his temples.

“It says she was thirty-nine when she died,” Alexis said. “That’s at least twenty years she might have spent doing things that didn’t make it into that article.”

Ethan nodded. “You’re right. Do you have a phone I could borrow?”

“You don’t have one?”

“I don’t usually keep a phone with me. I’m sort of… on the run. I try to stay off the grid, mostly.”

Alexis blinked. On the run? “Only if you promise my phone isn’t going to be accessory to some kind of crime.”

“What do you mean?” Ethan asked.

“My dad works with cops. You can only use my phone if you promise you’re not going to call your partner in crime.”

“No crimes,” Ethan said. “I promise.”

Alexis took her phone out of her pocket. “If you’re not on the run from officials, then who are you on the run from?”

“I suppose you could call them my guardians,” Ethan said.

Alexis handed him her phone. He dialed, and whoever was on the other line answered immediately. “Anything new?” A long pause. “I’ll call him when I can.” A shorter pause. “Sure thing.” He hung up, fiddled with the phone for a moment, and handed it back.

“That was short,” Alexis said. The number he’d dialed was gone from her lists.

“She’s my sister,” Ethan said. “She’s been looking for Johanna, too. She thinks our mother might have known her.” He seemed in awe of this revelation.

“Your mother?”

“She died when I was born. Well, she was killed.” Ethan shook his head. “Sorry. I won’t give you my life story.”

“Life stories are interesting,” Alexis said.

Ethan eyed her empty mug. “Coffee?”

“Tea,” Alexis corrected.

“I think I could use a cup. Do you want a refill while I’m up?”

Alexis smirked. “Are you trying to buy me a drink?”

“I guess so,” Ethan answered. He took her mug and went to stand in line. The line was actually fairly short, a lull in the usual Saturday chaos.

When he came back, a paper cup in one hand and a steaming mug in the other, Alexis asked, “So, how about that story?”

“I was brought up in a very strict place. I didn’t have much of a childhood. I escaped a couple of years ago—or I was let off. I’m still not entirely sure. Since then, the people I escaped from have been chasing me. They want me back, and there hasn’t yet been a limit to what they’ll do to catch me.”

“Why?”

“Because… I’m a special project. I have training and special skills.”

“So does that make you Iron Man or Spiderman?” Alexis teased.

Ethan looked confused. “I don’t—”

“Batman? Superman? Aquaman? The Flash? The Green Lantern?”

Ethan’s confusion only grew.

Alexis sighed. “Comic book superheroes. You really didn’t have much of a childhood.”

“Oh. No, I wasn’t allowed to choose what I read, and I wasn’t allowed to watch television or anything. I was kept inside most of the time.”

Alexis wasn’t sure what to say. She stared into her tea mug. Silence fell between them. Ethan fingered the pages of his notebook.

Alexis bit her lip. She was going to be so, so dead. “Do you have a place to stay tonight?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Ethan deflected.

“We’ve got a spare bedroom you can stay in tonight, if you like.” He seemed to waver in front of her, like smoke that might vanish at any second, and Alexis wanted to hold on to him as long as possible.

Ethan shook his head. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I’m on the run from some people who will stop at nothing to catch me.”

“If you’re worried about bringing disaster down on the house because you sleep for a few hours in our spare bedroom, don’t be. I told you, my dad works with cops, and he’s been a target a couple of times. His loft is, like, one of the most secure places to stay in the entire city, short of an official government building.”

Ethan looked uneasy. “I really shouldn’t,” he said. “I’m very, very bad luck.”

“I don’t believe in bad luck,” Alexis said, “and maybe you’ll get some real sleep.”

Ethan still seemed reluctant, but he said, “Okay, but I’ll be gone as soon as I can.”

“Stop it,” Alexis said. “It’ll be fine. Come on; we’ll take a cab.”

Ethan glanced out the window, and Alexis shouldered her backpack and tugged her phone out of her pocket. Ethan followed her out of the cafe, constantly checking around him. As she dialed her dad’s phone, she wondered if it was paranoia, or if people were really following him. She would have labeled it paranoia, except that it seemed like anyone who was looking for Johanna Beckett these days was just asking to be a target.

“Hey, pumpkin!” her dad answered.

“Hey, dad,” Alexis said.

“What’s up, kid?” he asked.

“Where are you?”

“At the loft. Why?” He sounded cheery. Alexis hated to ruin that; it had been so long since he was really and truly happy. But she would have to warn him that Ethan was looking for Johanna Beckett.

“Is Kate there?”

“Not right now. Is something wrong?”

“No, everything’s fine. I know it’s kind of short notice, but is it okay if I come by?”

Alexis could hear the worry creeping into her father’s voice. “Of course you can. You know that.”

“Thanks, Dad. I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Bye, pumpkin.”

Alexis hung up and breathed a sigh of relief.


	5. Chapter 5

Alexis flagged a cab and Ethan held the door for her. The cabbie pulled away from the curb as Alexis gave him the address of the loft. Both of them were silent for the ride to the loft, and Ethan said nothing until after Alexis had paid the driver and they’d stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of her dad’s building. “This is pretty nice,” he commented.

“My dad’s a famous author,” Alexis said. She greeted the doorman, but didn’t stop for an introduction. If Ethan really was being followed, it was probably better for everyone if she didn’t introduce him to every doorman and cabbie in the city.

“You said he worked with cops,” Ethan said, confused.

“Yeah. He writes crime novels,” she told him.

Alexis used her own key at the front door. She wasn’t surprised to see her dad in the kitchen, up to his elbows in whatever he’d decided to make for lunch. Ever since she’d started college, every one of her visits had started this way.

“Alexis! You didn’t tell me you were bringing a friend.”

Alexis smirked, dropping her bag and shoes at the door and going to sit at the counter. “I didn’t want you putting him through the gauntlet. This is Ethan,” she finished, her sentence trailing off as she realized he was still standing at the door, holding on to his backpack and shoes and gawking wide-eyed at the loft.

“Ethan?”

Castle waved at the barstools with the chef’s knife in his hand, making Ethan flinch. “You can have a seat,” Castle told him. “I promise the knife’s just for the tomatoes.”

Ethan seemed to realize then that he was in a house and not a museum or an art gallery. He dropped his backpack and his shoes and took a seat at the counter, watching the knife warily. “Thank you.”

Castle started dicing another tomato. “I’m Rick, by the way.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Ethan said politely. A hint of excitement, or possibly anxiety, gave his soft speech a bit of an edge.

“Likewise. Where did you two meet?”

Alexis looked at Ethan, who was wringing his hands anxiously. “At Bruno’s,” she answered.

“You go there a lot, Ethan?”

“Actually, we just met an hour ago.” Alexis wished for a convenient way to steer the conversation elsewhere. Ethan looked incredibly distracted, gazing around the loft. He didn’t seem to hear her conversation with her dad. “Ethan? You okay?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. Sorry. It just reminds me a little of my sister’s house,” Ethan said. Alexis knew her father could hear that wistfulness that softened Ethan’s words even further. She was willing to bet that her dad was already outlining a story around this soft-spoken boy from the coffee shop. There was no mistaking the echo in his voice, that tone that screamed he was missing his family desperately. 

“You must miss her,” Alexis said.

Ethan nodded.

Alexis wasn’t sure what to say. What could she, with a living mother and a living father, say to someone who’d lost his mother—and, she guessed, his father, too—and who had met his only other family briefly a year ago? ‘I’m sorry’ didn’t seem like it would cut it. “I’m sorry,” she said anyway. “About your family, I mean. I can’t imagine not having my family around.”

Ethan gave her a little smile. “Don’t be sorry for me. I’m just glad to know I have a family.”

“Okay, you kids. Wash up,” Castle instructed as he took a bowl of spaghetti noodles to the table.

Alexis washed her hands in the kitchen sink and set the table while Ethan washed his. Alexis tried not to watch Ethan too closely while they ate, but as the conversation progressed, she couldn’t help notice that he seemed to relax. By the time they finished eating, Ethan no longer had the look of someone who might vanish at any moment. He and Alexis cleared up, but he kept dropping forks, and after some prodding, he admitted he hadn’t slept in a while.

Alexis showed him up to the guest bedroom. “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”

Ethan thanked her and she left, intent on finding her dad and warning him about Ethan. “Dad?” she called across the loft.

“Office,” came the reply.

Alexis went and sat in the extra chair, suddenly terrified to tell him about Ethan’s search.

“He’s interesting,” Castle remarked.

“He says his mother was friends with a woman named Johanna Beckett,” Alexis said before she could stop herself.

“What?” Alexis wasn’t sure what she saw in her dad’s face, but it wasn’t something she liked.

“Please don’t be mad,” Alexis said quickly. “He ran away and the people who used to take care of him are trying to track him down and he just looked so tired, like he’d just disappear if I left. Really I just wanted to be nice and—”

“Alexis!”

Alexis stopped.

“Kate’s not going to be here tonight, but he has to leave tomorrow.”

Alexis nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. I should have asked first, but I—I’m sorry.”

Alexis could see her dad trying to give her the Stern Dad look, but he’d never been particularly good at it. He just looked worried. “If he had the chance to say _anything_ to Kate about her mom, I’d never forgive myself.”

* * *

Ethan had moved to the living room so he could think while Alexis and her dad made dinner, and was now sitting at the window, concentrating on remembering everything he could about his own mother: things his sister had told him, things he’d learned from other people, and a few things he’d seen on the DSAs. His notebook lay open in his lap and he ran his fingers over the pages, relishing the familiar texture of his own handwriting. He had pictures of his family in a pocket in the front of the notebook, but he wanted to remember without the help of photographs. He knew their faces so well that, if he had to, he could sketch them from memory. But there was nothing about the mysterious Johanna.

His mind wandered to the girl with the flaming red hair and her strangely energetic father. He could almost let himself feel at home here. They’d treated him like he was a cousin or a close friend, not like a little lost boy or a stranger. Alexis had told him that her grandmother would be at dinner. Ethan didn’t know what it was like to have a grandmother. He didn’t really know what it was like to have a mother or a father, either, but maybe someday he might.

Still, it was nice to be in a place, however temporary, where he felt like he could stop looking over his shoulder. Maybe tonight he could even get some real sleep, instead of the one-eyed half-rest he was so used to.

He heard footsteps pad gently across the living room. “Dinner should be done soon,” Alexis said, sitting down next to him. “You’ve been sitting here for hours.”

“Yes,” he replied. “I don’t have very many opportunities to sit still. I take them when I can.” He brushed his hand over the open notebook in his lap. “I’ve been thinking about my mother.”

“Do you miss her?” Alexis asked.

Ethan smiled a little. “I never met her.”

“Oh, right. I’m sorry.”

“But yes,” he said. He closed his notebook and tucked it under his arm. “I’ve always missed her.” Alexis sat next to him as he stared out over the city. The sun was almost gone, and the city lights reminded him that he wasn’t underground any more. Mr. Raines was not his commander, and he was, for the most part, free.

“I have to ask you to do something for me,” Alexis said.

“Okay,” Ethan said.

“Don’t mention Johanna. Please.”

Ethan frowned. “I won’t, if you say so. Can I ask why?”

Alexis bit her lip. “The Johanna I told you about, that my gram knew, was a family friend. She died a few years ago, but we still don’t talk about her.”

Oh. Ethan nodded. That explained Alexis’ reaction. And here, he thought she knew the woman he was searching for. “I’m sorry. I won’t say anything.”

“Thank you.” Alexis looked relieved.

He got to his feet, deftly changing the subject. “Dinner, you said?”

Alexis nodded. “Lasagna. My dad makes some of the best.”

“I haven’t had a home-cooked meal in a very long time,” Ethan said.

“I think you’ll like this one,” Alexis said. She’d already set the table, and Rick carried over a large glass dish full of cheese, tomato sauce, and pasta.

“It looks incredible,” Ethan said, picking up a basket of bread and setting it next to the lasagna. Alexis brought a pitcher of iced tea and a bowl of salad.

Partway through dinner, Ethan heard his Inner Sense rise up in protest of his having been in one place for so long. He tried not to flinch at the growing headache, but he caught Alexis’ look of concern. He just shook his head, hoping she’d stop worrying about him so much.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on shutting the voices out, and, after a minute or so, they died down to an insistent buzzing. “You okay?” Alexis asked.

Ethan nodded. “Just a headache. I’m used to it.” He rejoined the conversation; though it had moved out of his range of knowledge and into pop culture, the Castles were happy to explain anything he didn’t understand.


	6. Chapter 6

Ethan sat at the darkened living room window, turning through his notebook. _January 8, 1986: Ethan’s birthdate. Catherine Parker is killed._ According to their search of New York obituaries, Johanna Beckett was killed thirteen years later. A thousand questions swirled through Ethan’s mind, and he rubbed his eyes. He’d been sitting at the window for almost two hours now, after his headache had gotten so bad he’d had to excuse himself from the after-dinner conversation.  
He heard Alexis’ soft footsteps behind him. She and her family had been so nice to him, feeding him and making him feel comfortable, and Alexis hadn’t even had to ask her dad about Ethan staying in the guest room. He’d come into the kitchen while Alexis was doing dishes and suggested it himself, on the condition that it was only for the night; the Kate Rule still stood.

Alexis sat next to Ethan, crossing her legs and watching the traffic crawl by below them. “How’s your head?”

Ethan smiled. “Fine, thank you.” He closed his notebook. “I need to go for a walk.”

Alexis frowned. “Right now? It’s almost ten.”

“Yes,” Ethan said. “I won’t be long.”

“I’ll go with you,” Alexis offered.

Ethan shook his head. If the Sweepers came for him and he had to run, he’d be putting Alexis in danger, and he would never forgive himself for that. “You should stay here.”

Alexis shook her head, poorly concealing her fear. “Someone has to make sure you come back,” she joked, but Ethan knew she wasn’t really joking.

“It might be dangerous.” Ethan was fairly sure nobody knew where he was at the moment, and he intended to keep it that way, but he wasn’t going to risk a new friend. He also wanted to call his sister, and that was twice as dangerous.

Alexis didn’t look like she was going to let it go that easily. “If it’s going to be dangerous, why are you going?”

“Alexis,” he said pleadingly. “I’ll come back, I promise.”

Alexis frowned. “Don’t make promises like that,” she told him. “People do that, and then they don’t come back.”

Ethan sighed. “I’ll be back. Your dad promised to make omelets for breakfast.”

His joke made Alexis smile a little, and she nodded. “Don’t take too long, okay?”

“I won’t.” He put his shoes on and thought about taking his backpack, but instead, he put a pen and a few quarters in his pocket and left his backpack by the door as a sign of faith.

He walked down the street to the convenience store a couple of blocks away. He stayed in the shadows, avoiding the cameras. He was not going to be caught by something as stupid and simple as a security tape. Having located the single camera at the store, which was trained on the door, but probably still caught the pay phone in the corner of the screen, Ethan walked up with his head low. He inserted the quarters from his pocket and leaned against the phone’s console, casually shielding the dial pad as well as his face from the camera’s view.

“What?” Parker demanded.

“It’s nice to talk to you, too, sister,” Ethan said.

“Two calls in one week?” she asked.

“Did you find anything about Johanna Beckett?” Ethan asked, ignoring her question.

“She was a lawyer in Manhattan, murdered fourteen years ago,” Parker said. “There are letters in the Centre archives that may have been from her. They’re all about a special project she worked on with a colleague inside the Centre.”

“Our mother?” Ethan guessed.

“I can’t know for sure until I have the other letters. But the letters are all dated nearly three decades ago, before Mother died.”

“You’re sure it was Johanna Beckett?”

“They’re signed ‘JB’,” Parker said. “I can’t be entirely sure, but I think so.”

Ethan heard the warning voices grow louder in his mind. He looked around as much as he could without showing his face to the security camera. “I have to go. I’ll call again if I can.” He put the receiver on its cradle and ducked into the shadows. As soon as he was clear of the camera, he bolted.

A fist came around the first corner and grazed Ethan’s jaw. Ethan grabbed the attached arm and twisted, bringing his assailant—a poorly-disguised Sweeper—into the streetlights. The Sweeper swung a leg around, trying to trip Ethan up, but Ethan had trained to be an assassin and a stealth bomber and a hundred other deadly things. He knew exactly where Sweepers kept their weapons, and Ethan had the Sweeper’s handgun poised to kill in a matter of seconds. He almost pulled the trigger, but Alexis flashed through his mind, and he lowered the gun to the man’s knee before his finger squeezed. He was no longer Mr. Raines’ monster. He was a free human being, and he didn’t have to kill people. Still, he wasn’t an idiot. He pocketed the clip from the weapon and dropped the gun in the nearest trash bin.  
Ethan took a slightly longer, more circuitous route to Alexis’ building—no sense in leading his pursuer straight to her. He was careful around corners and jogged down straight stretches of sidewalk to save time. He dropped the clip in a different trash can somewhere along the way. He stopped in front of Alexis’ building to catch his breath before walking inside and taking the stairs to the loft. Alexis opened the door before he had a chance to knock.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Ethan nodded, taking a few deep breaths to encourage his body to relax again. “I took the stairs,” he explained.

Alexis didn’t look fooled. “Did the stairs hit you in the face?” she joked.

Ethan worked his jaw. Maybe that fist did more than just graze his face. “Just a bit of self defense,” he said. “You should see the guy who tried to attack me.”

“At least you made it back in one piece,” Alexis said. “I’ll get you some ice.”

“I’m fine,” Ethan protested.

Alexis shrugged. “If you say so, but I’m not going to explain to everyone else tomorrow morning why half your face is the size of a small melon.”

Oh. “On second thought,” Ethan amended, “maybe I should.” He followed Alexis to the kitchen, where she dumped ice into a plastic bag and wrapped it in a rag. “Thank you.”

“What were you doing out there?” Alexis asked, handing him the ice pack.

Ethan put the pack gingerly against his face. The cold felt good, but his jaw would be very sore in the morning. “I needed to call my sister,” he said. “I was taken by surprise.” She didn’t need to know the rest.

Alexis scrutinized his face, presumably looking for more evidence of a fight. “Are you sure you didn’t just walk into something?”

Ethan smiled, even though it hurt a little. “I walked into someone’s fist. He didn’t seem very pleased.”

Alexis rolled her eyes. “Okay, sure.”

Ethan considered telling her what actually happened, but he decided he would rather be the brunt of her jokes for a while than tell her how he almost killed a man without even thinking about it. He didn’t want to be Raines’ monster.

When the ice started to melt, Alexis took the ice pack from him and dumped the contents of the plastic bag in the sink before tossing the bag in the trash. “You look tired,” she commented.

Ethan felt fine, but ‘fine’ was usually somewhere between tired and half-dead, so he supposed he couldn’t go wrong with some sleep. He got his backpack from the foyer and followed Alexis up the stairs. “The bathroom’s right here.” She pointed to the open door on the right. “If you want to take a shower, there are towels and stuff under the sink. I’m across the hall if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” Ethan said.

He took a moment to look around now that he wasn’t intent on taking a good nap. The guest room was small, and most of it was occupied by the full-size bed and the dresser. A full-length mirror stood next to the dresser, and a pair of curtains covered the window next to it. Ethan dropped his backpack next to the dresser and took out his toothbrush and toothpaste. Being on the run was a poor excuse for letting his teeth rot. He went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth, then went to the guest room, shucked off his jeans, and crawled under the covers.

Ethan woke well-rested, a rarity in his life. He looked at the alarm clock next to the bed, surprised that it was already six in the morning: he’d slept for over seven hours. He hadn’t slept that long in well over a year. He got up and changed back into his jeans before pulling the covers up on the bed. He took his backpack and crept down the stairs, leaving the pack by the door. He sat in front of the living room window with his notebook, watching the city wake up bathed in the grey predawn. He would have to leave soon. He couldn’t stay much longer, couldn’t risk Alexis. He ran his fingers absently over the battered cover as the sky blushed and the tops of the tallest buildings caught the first rays of the sun. Ethan rarely wished for things, but right now he wished for a life in which he wasn’t always running, wasn’t constantly followed by a swath of destruction. A life he could involve someone else in.


	7. Chapter 7

Alexis found Ethan at the window early in the morning and sat with him until breakfast. She tried to stall afterward, but Ethan seemed keen on leaving. His previous nervousness had come back, and she didn’t want to leave the room for fear that he’d vanish. She convinced him to stay long enough to leave with her, but he insisted on leaving as soon as possible. She packed a lunch each for herself and for Ethan, hoping he’d at least walk around the city with her before he disappeared altogether.

She promised her dad she’d call later, and by the time she and Ethan finally left, he looked like he’d cease to exist if she so much as blinked. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

He nodded. Ever since he’d explained the bruise on his face (he’d simply said he’d hit himself during a nightmare), Ethan had grown increasingly anxious, and Alexis hated to see him so wound up. In the elevator, she touched his hand, and his eyes snapped to her face. “You’re tense again.” She smiled. “It’s not the end of the world,” she told him.

“I stayed above ground too long, and going out last night was dangerous. Whoever attacked me had to have known I was staying nearby; I didn’t have my backpack with me.”

Alexis slipped her hand in his. “It’s New York, and you don’t particularly stand out. On campus, you’d look like just another student.”

“Not to them. They’re trained to find me.” He took his hand away from hers and put it in his pocket.

“I just don’t want you to vanish,” she confessed quietly as the doors opened on the bottom floor.

Ethan’s response surprised her. “I don’t think I’ll be able to disappear that easily. I think I might keep turning up, like a bad penny.”

“You’re not a bad penny,” Alexis said.

Ethan shook his head and looked up and down the street. Alexis followed him as he walked to the corner, where he stopped and turned around. “Alexis, you can’t follow me,” he told her.

“But—” Alexis could feel her face turn red, and her eyes stung with impending tears. She swallowed and cleared her throat, blinking the tears away.

Ethan stood in front of her for a moment before kissing her cheek lightly. “I’ll see you again, Alexis Castle.” He walked away, and by the time Alexis followed him around the corner, the street beyond was empty.

* * *

“What?” Parker snapped. She knew who was on the other end; it was a quarter to midnight, and Parker was thinking about the short call from Ethan.

“You’re falling behind, Miss Parker,” Jarod said. “I’ve seen Lyle twice in the last week, but my sources tell me you haven’t even stopped by.”

“I’ve been busy,” Parker sneered.

“Too busy to do your job? Tut tut.” Jarod sounded like he was gloating.

“It’s just a small detour. Don’t act so pleased.” There were better moves to be played in their game, but Parker was desperate for an out, so she asked, “Have you heard from Ethan?”

“No,” Jarod replied. “Have you?”

“He called the night after you did and asked about Johanna.”

“The murdered lawyer,” Jarod said. “I do my homework. I just can’t figure out why the Centre would wait thirteen years to kill her.”

“I don’t know,” Parker admitted. “Broots thinks the Centre didn’t know about her.”

“The Centre, ignorant?” Jarod mocked. “That’s like saying the Centre doesn’t have two people failing to catch their best Pretender.”

Parker was going to take offense, but Jarod hung up before she had the chance. He was right; it seemed unlikely that the Centre would wait thirteen years to kill Johanna Beckett.

* * *

The letters were proving frustrating. Broots had given her a copy of all the letters that existed in the Centre databases, but even that was only half of the correspondence. The letters had no greeting, only a signature, always the same: _JB_. They told Parker little to nothing about the ‘special project’, but Parker suspected much of the information was in the missing letters, the ones sent from the Centre operative to Johanna.

Without the other letters, there was no sure way of knowing that there was a connection between Catherine Parker and Johanna Beckett, no matter what Parker’s instincts told her. She would just have to find the missing notes herself.

Broots poked his head into her office, clutching the half-open door like a shield. “Uh, Miss Parker?”

“What?” she snapped.

“I think you might want to see this,” he said.

Parker stashed the letters in her desk drawer and followed Broots down to his workstation. “Amaze me,” she said dryly.

Broots brought up the files the letters were stored in. “See the dates on the letters? They’re all dated around ’85.” He summoned another window, this one showing information about the file. “But the entry date—the date the letters were first recorded into the database—isn’t until almost fourteen years later.”

Parker looked at the long list of information, skimming until she found the entry date: January 10, 1999. “There is no way that’s coincidence,” Parker sneered.

“It’s the Centre,” Broots remarked. “Whoever wrote those letters was killed just before the letters went into the database.”

Parker frowned. “But that’s still thirteen years those letters stayed hidden.”

“Weren’t there some renovations done on some Centre properties back in ’98?” Broots asked. “Tech and security upgrades or something.”

“The Centre was bugging their own real estate,” Parker said. “Trying to weed out traitors. That was just before I came back to Corporate; I had to stay abroad for a couple extra months while it was going on.”

“Someone must have found those letters while they were doing renovations.”

“It’s an explanation,” Parker said, and though she believed it could be true, she also knew it was weak. Hiding anything from the Centre was no cake walk.

* * *

Parker had hoped to spend her Sunday afternoon at home, doing nothing of consequence and certainly not standing trial in Raines’ office. But, of course, she had a tattler for a twin brother, and he’d convinced The Wheezer that Parker was not doing her job. Now Parker was enduring a long list of accusations, veiled threats, and blatant criticisms of how she’d been chasing Jarod for six years and still hadn’t managed to catch him.

When Raines finally let her leave, Lyle was waiting outside with a smug grin on his face. Parker wanted so very badly to wipe that idiotic grin off his face in any way she could, but she was pretty sure he’d just grin through it. “Don’t look so pleased with yourself. One day you’ll have been chasing Jarod for six years, too.”

Lyle laughed. “Yeah, and you’ll have been chasing him for eleven. Unless _Daddy_ gets fed up with you first.”

Parker shuddered involuntarily. Her repulsion for Raines ran so very deep, and Lyle never missed a chance to remind her that the wheezing creep was, in fact, her biological father. Raines as Lyle’s father made perfect sense—they were both slimy, murderous scumbags—but she sometimes wondered at her relation to her twin brother. Had they actually shared such close quarters for nine months without killing each other?

Lyle looked so smug he could burst. Parker tried to remember why she ever gave up smoking. She brushed past him and went back to her office. If she wasn’t going to have a quiet day at home, she could at least get something done.

Sydney was in his office when she passed, and Parker was fairly certain he lived there, because he never seemed to go home. “Miss Parker,” he called.

She walked into his office. “Any news?”

Sydney was about to answer when Broots walked in. “Miss Parker!” he said, surprised. “Uh, hi.”

“Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just here for show.”

“Oh, well. I was actually just going to tell you. Jarod’s, uh, in New York.”

“Is he now?” Parker drawled. “New York’s a big state.”

“He’s in the city,” Broots corrected. “New York City. I’m not sure where, exactly, but he’s there. Somewhere.”

Parker arched a brow. “Pack a bag, Sydney. We’re going to the Big Apple for a few days.” Jarod in New York was perfect. It was much easier to multitask when everything was happening in one place.

“What, uh, what about me?” Broots asked haltingly.

In her heels, Parker was so tall she had to crouch a little to Broots’ eye level. “Don’t you have some letters to read?”

“Oh,” Broots said, laughing nervously. “Of course. Right.” He skittered out the door and down the hall.

Sydney studied Parker with that psychiatrist’s eye of his. “What?” she demanded.

Sydney grinned, stifling a chuckle. Parker was at a loss to say what he found so amusing, and he refused to say. She gave up on finding out and went to her office, where she took a pre-packed bag out of a cupboard. Chasing Jarod was a full-time occupation, and she’d learned early on that being ready for anything was absolutely essential. She got one of her Sweepers to take her bag to the airstrip and called her pilot. Within half an hour, Parker and Sydney were on their way to New York City.


	8. Chapter 8

When Alexis left her dorm Tuesday morning, there was a note taped to her door. _Carl Schurz statue, 1:00_ , it said. In place of a signature was a pencil rubbing of a penny. Alexis smiled and tucked the note into her pocket.

She managed to make it through class without too much distraction. Her notes were coherent enough that she could read over them later and probably remember most of the lecture. She forced herself to go to lunch and type up her notes. At twelve forty-five, she decided she couldn’t wait any longer. She packed her laptop and notebook away and walked out to the statue. She found a bench and sat down to wait.

Alexis watched people mill about the park. Dog-walkers and families and old men in sweaters walked by, but after twenty minutes, there was still no sign of Ethan. She took the note out of her pocket. She was worried that something might have happened to him, but she refused to let herself panic just yet. He was only a few minutes late; maybe he’d just lost track of—

“Sorry I’m late,” came a voice from behind her. “I had to take the long way.”

Alexis turned around to look at him. The bruise on his face was nearly gone, but he had a fresh cut on his forehead that had yet to scab over and his eye was starting to blacken. “You got in another fight.”

Ethan shrugged. “It happens.”

Alexis wanted to chide him for letting himself get hurt so often, but she suspected it wasn’t entirely his fault. “Come on,” she said, standing and holding out her hand. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Ethan didn’t take her hand, but he followed her out of the park and to her dorm building. She picked up some ice from the machine before heading upstairs to her room. He held on to his backpack and sat on the edge of her desk chair. Alexis got the first aid kit and a plastic bag and started cleaning the blood from Ethan’s face. The cut was deeper than she’d thought, but it didn’t look like it needed major attention. She dug out a gauze pad and some tape and covered the cut, and then dumped the ice in the plastic bag, covered it with a towel, and handed it to Ethan.

He stared at the ice pack for a moment, and Alexis noticed that, now that she wasn’t holding him still, he was swaying a little. “Ethan?” she prompted, digging through her kit for the little penlight. “Ethan, look at me.” She shone the light in one eye, then in the other. His eyes constricted only slightly. Alexis set the kit on her desk. “Ethan?”

“Huh?” he asked, turning to her. He still held the ice pack in his hand as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“I think you’ve got a concussion. We’re going to have to take you to the doctor.”

Ethan looked panicked. “No—no, ’m fine. Just tired.”

“No, no, no,” Alexis said, digging her phone out of her bag. “No, you’re not fine.”

Ethan’s eyes slid shut and he leaned precariously. “Ethan!” Alexis snapped. His eyes flew open. “Don’t go to sleep, okay?” she said gently. “We’re going to go to the health center first.”

Ethan shook his head slowly. “Not the Centre. Not Raines.”

Nonsense speech was not a good sign. Alexis didn’t know who Raines was, but she knew that if Ethan resisted her, she’d never be able to get him off the chair, much less down to the health centre. There was no other alternative. Alexis speed-dialed her dad.

“Hey, pumpkin,” Castle answered.

“Are you working?” she asked. She didn’t want to interrupt him. 

“No, honey. Just pestering Beckett. What’s up?”

“Uh, well, Ethan got in a fistfight, I think. He’s a little banged up. I’m pretty sure he’s got a concussion. I could take him to the health center, but he won’t budge and I don’t want to risk him falling on his head and making it worse than it already is.”

Castle covered the phone and said something to Beckett. “I’ll come get you,” he told Alexis. “Do you want me to call the doctor?”

“Please,” Alexis said, snapping her fingers in Ethan’s ear to keep him awake. “And hurry. Ethan keeps trying to fall asleep on me.”

“I’ll be there soon,” Castle promised.

Alexis hung up and put a hand on Ethan’s face. “Hey. Don’t go to sleep. Talk to me. What happened?”

“They can’t catch me,” Ethan told her. “They try to catch me, but they never will.” He spoke slowly, his words catching on his tongue and stumbling out of his mouth.

Alexis sighed. “Who hit you?”

“Sweepers,” Ethan replied. “He hit me, so I took his gun and shot his feet.”

Alexis wasn’t sure what a sweeper was, but she got the idea that they weren’t terribly nice. Even so, had Ethan really shot the guy’s feet? “Where’s the gun now?”

“Took the clip out, tossed it in the trash. Tossed the gun in th’other trash. They can’t catch me.” Ethan tried to smile, but his lips were dry and pale, and with his black eye and patched-up forehead, he looked half-deranged.

Alexis brushed his hair away from the bandage and guided the hand with the ice pack to his eye. “Nobody’s catching you today. Nobody but me.”

“I’m a bad penny, Alexis.”

Alexis pulled the note out of her pocket and showed it to him. “A bad penny’s still a penny.” Alexis’ phone buzzed. _Two blocks_ , Castle’s message said. “Come on,” she said, trying to hoist him up by his arm. “Up you get.” He stood and swayed slightly.

“Whoa. Little bit dizzy.” He blinked sluggishly.

“Rick’s here, Ethan,” she said. “He’s going to take us somewhere else, get you checked out.” Alexis shouldered her bag and guided Ethan out of the room. 

Ethan nodded. “Okay. Not the Centre?” 

Alexis locked the door behind her. “No, we’re not going to the health center.” They managed to make it down the stairs in one piece, and Alexis was glad her dad was right outside the door with the car.

“How is he?” Castle asked, opening the door for Alexis. Kate sat in the driver’s seat.

“He’s still conscious, but he’s not very coherent.” She helped Ethan into the seat, and was relieved to see him take off his backpack and buckle the seatbelt by himself. She went around to the other side and slid into the middle seat. Ethan’s eyelids were drooping again, and Alexis snapped her fingers in his ear again.

“Don’t fall asleep on me yet,” she said.

“I’m not sleeping,” he slurred. “I can’t hear them.” He sounded panicky again. Alexis shushed him and brushed his hair back from his face again. She was well aware of her dad watching her, but she didn’t particularly care what they were thinking. She had to make sure Ethan stayed awake until they got to the loft and a medical professional.

Ethan closed his eyes, and Alexis snapped her fingers, trying to keep him awake. “No,” he said. “Not sleeping.” He kept his eyes shut. “Concentrating.”

“Talk to me, then. You have to stay awake until we get to the loft.”

“They’re so far away. I can’t hear them. Why can’t I hear them?” Ethan opened his eyes, grabbing Alexis’ arm. “Where did they go?”

Alexis put her hand over his. “Hey, hey. Don’t worry. It’s just a concussion. You’ll be okay. Calm down.” Alexis rubbed her thumb along the back of his hand and he settled down. His expression turned from wild panic to subdued worry. Alexis used her penlight to check Ethan’s eyes again. They still didn’t constrict properly, but Alexis refused to worry; people got concussions all the time, and Ethan would be fine.

“Sorry,” Ethan said quietly.

Alexis shook her head. “You don’t have to apologize, Ethan.”

“I’m a bad penny,” he said.

Alexis sighed. “You’re not a penny. You just have a concussion.”

He looked confused for a moment before he smiled. “That’s me. Bad penny with a concussion.” He leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes.

“No, Ethan. Don’t go to sleep.”

“Not sleeping,” he mumbled as the car pulled to a stop. Alexis heard the wrenching sound of the parking brake and unbuckled Ethan’s seatbelt. He opened his eyes. “Where are we? Why did we stop?”

“We’re at the loft,” Alexis said. “We’re going to put you to bed and then you can sleep, okay?”

Castle hoisted Ethan out of the car, careful to avoid hitting his head. “Come on, buddy,” Castle encouraged. Alexis took her bag and Ethan’s backpack. She supported Ethan’s other arm, and between her and Castle, they managed to half-drag, half-carry Ethan to the elevator. Alexis talked to Ethan until they got to the loft, where Dr. Roberts was waiting for them.

Castle got the door open, and they took Ethan to the couch at the doctor’s request.

“Looks like a concussion to me,” he said. “I’m Dr. Roberts. Can you tell me your name?” he asked as he dug through his kit and started checking Ethan’s other vitals. 

“Ethan,” he said thickly.

“Ethan what?”

“Just Ethan.”

Dr. Roberts looked up at Alexis, who shrugged. She didn’t know Ethan’s last name, either. “What year is it, Ethan?” Roberts continued.

“Twenty, um, twelve. Twenty-twelve.”

“Do you know today’s date?”

“October, um… five. Fifth.”

Roberts nodded. “Can you tell me what happened to you?”

“Got punched in the face,” Ethan mumbled. “Stole his gun. Shot his feet.”

Roberts eyebrows arched. “Impressive,” he said dryly. “Where were you?”

“Couple blocks from Morning—Morningside Park.” Ethan’s eyes were closed, and his head rested against the back of the couch.

“Are you tired, Ethan?”

“Yah,” he replied.

“Rick, if you would put him somewhere restful,” Dr. Roberts instructed. Castle pulled Ethan to his feet and took him up the stairs. “Alexis, wake him up every hour and ask him those questions. If he gets worse, keep him awake and have your dad call me. I’ll come by tomorrow to check on him.” He packed his tools back in his kit and zipped it up.

“Thank you, Dr. Roberts.” Alexis showed Dr. Roberts to the door, then darted up the stairs to the guest room.


	9. Chapter 9

Castle tiptoed upstairs, past the bathroom and Martha’s room, and eased open the door of the guest room. “Alexis?” he called softly.

“Yeah,” Alexis answered. The lamp next to the bed threw shadows across Ethan’s face, and turned Alexis into a silhouette. She’d been sitting in that chair all night, making sure Ethan woke up every hour and answered her questions.

“How is he?” Castle asked.

“He’s okay.” Alexis closed the textbook she’d been reading. “I mean, he’s not any worse.”

“You should go to bed.”

“No. I’ll be fine.”

Castle frowned. “What about school?”

“I don’t have any classes on Wednesdays,” Alexis said, studying Ethan’s face intently. “Thank you, Dad, for letting me bring him back here.”

“Well, I wasn’t about to let you keep a boy in your dorm room,” Castle said.

“Yeah. I told him… well, I told him that our family friend Johanna died a few years ago, and it’s still a touchy subject. He says he won’t mention it.”

It was nice to know that Alexis had come up with a half-truth good enough to fool her friend, but it wasn’t enough for Castle to want to have Ethan around all the time. “Thank you.”

“I know it’s not much,” Alexis said. “But it was all I could think of.”

Castle sighed. That was his daughter, always trying to make things best for everyone. “I think we’ll be okay if Kate doesn’t meet him.”

Alexis nodded, watching Ethan sleep. “Yeah.”

“Do you need anything?”

Alexis shook her head. “Thanks, though.”

“Of course.” Castle slipped back through the door.

“Actually—Dad?” he heard Alexis call.

He stuck his head back into the room. “Yeah?”

“Could you sit with him for a minute? I need to use the bathroom.”

Castle nodded. “I think I can handle that.”

Alexis gave her dad a grateful smile and disappeared out the door.

* * *

Martha hung her coat on the rack, humming an old show tune. She’d been at a rehearsal all day, and she was definitely ready for a wind-down glass of red and a bit of Shakespeare, or maybe Thoreau.

The loft was empty and quiet, and Martha recalled something about a case. She poured herself a glass of wine and went upstairs for her copy of Hamlet. Soft snores came from further down the hall, and when Martha went to investigate, she found her granddaughter sitting next to the guest bed, fast asleep. The boy—what was his name? Elijah? Ethan?—slept in the bed, one eye black, the other shadowed by a bandage. Martha gently shook Alexis awake.

“Gram?” Alexis mumbled sleepily.

“You should go to bed, darling.” The poor girl was going to get a crick in her neck sleeping like that.

Alexis shook her head. “I’m fine. I don’t want to leave him alone.”

Martha wasn’t surprised. Her granddaughter was as stubborn as any Rodgers. “Don’t you have school?”

Alexis shrugged. “I can miss a couple days,” she said tiredly. “It won’t kill me.”

Martha sighed.

“She’s right,” the bed mumbled.

Alexis gasped. “Ethan!”

The boy’s eyes were still shut, and his mouth barely moved. “You should go to school, ’Lexis,” he murmured.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Head hurts. Tired.”

Ethan may not have seen the tender expression on Alexis’ face, but it did not escape Martha’s notice. She’d seen that expression on a Castle face before, when Kate had been shot and Richard had spent so many hours sitting at her bedside, waiting for her to wake up. “You can go back to sleep if you can answer a question,” Alexis told him. “What time did you meet me at the statue yesterday?”

“One-eleven. I was late. Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” she said, brushing his hair away from his bandage. “You win. You can go back to sleep.”

He nodded slightly and his body relaxed, sinking back into the bed.

“Do you need anything, dear?” Martha asked.

Alexis sniffled and shook her head. “No.”

“Oh, honey,” Martha said, stepping to her granddaughter’s side and putting a hand on Alexis’ shoulder. Alexis turned and hugged her grandmother tightly. “He’ll be alright,” Martha said assuringly, running a hand over Alexis’ hair. The poor girl was worn out and worried, and her exhaustion made the situation seem so much worse.

* * *

Richard Castle was the king of stealth. He was the winner of his and Alexis’ ten-thousand point laser tag game, and he was a killer at paintball.

But when it came to spying on his half-asleep daughter, Richard Castle may as well have been a wheezing elephant for all the stealth he had.

“Dad,” Alexis said tiredly. “You can come in. I’m not going to bite.”

Castle opened the door. “How is he?”

“He isn’t any worse. I can’t tell if he’s getting better. He just sleeps until I wake him up, and then he answers the questions and goes back to sleep. Lanie said to call her if he sleeps past noon tomorrow.”

“And you’re worried about him.”

“Yeah. I mean, I read about concussions and they’re really hard to know what happened and he might be sleeping because his brain is trying to heal up or he might be sleeping because his brain can’t wake him up enough and I don’t know which it is.” When she turned, Castle could see the red rims around her eyes and the darkening circles beneath them.

“Have you slept at all?” asked Castle.

Alexis shrugged. “A little. I’ve got my alarm that wakes us up every two hours.”

“When’s the next alarm?”

“It just went off ten minutes ago.”

Castle checked his watch and made a mental note of the time. “Go to bed. I’ll wake him up in an hour and fifty minutes.”

Alexis shook her head. “I don’t want to leave him.”

“Alexis. You need sleep. You still have school, and I know what the questions are. I was there for that part.”

“Dad, I’m not leaving him.”

Castle huffed. “Alexis Castle—”

“Don’t ‘Alexis Castle’ me!” she protested. “If it was Beckett, would you leave?”

Castle was silent. They both knew the answer. They’d both _witnessed_ the answer.

Alexis turned back to Ethan, watching him as her eyelids dropped lower and lower.

Castle turned back to her at the door and said, “Normally, I would never condone this, but—” he steeled himself, then nodded to the empty side of the bed.

“Are you sure you won’t have an aneurysm?” Alexis asked.

“Just… keep it PG, pumpkin.” He heard Alexis take her phone from the little table next to her and shuffle to the other side of the room.

When he came back half an hour later, she was fast asleep as far away from Ethan as she could get, and almost in danger of falling off the bed.

* * *

The alarm blared in Alexis’s ear, dragging her out of her deep sleep. She reached for Ethan’s shoulder to wake him, and was surprised when he caught her hand and said, “Welcome to the living, Alexis.”

“Ethan! You’re awake,” she said, sitting up and blinking. “How are you feeling?”

He smiled. “I’m a little dizzy still, but I can—I feel much better. How long have I been out?”

“It’s Thursday,” she said, getting up and tugging straight the covers she’d slept on.

“Don’t you have school or something?”

“I can miss a day; it’s not the end of the world. Do you want something to eat?”

He looked at the door. “I, uh—”

Alexis heard her dad’s loud, off-key humming in the hallway. The man himself appeared a few seconds later, carrying a tray laden with breakfast. “Ta-da! Nice to see you’re awake, pumpkin. Did you sleep well?”

Alexis blushed. “Better than the chair,” she admitted sheepishly. “What’s for breakfast?”

* * *

Ethan sat in front of the window, concentrating on the voices that were slowly coming back into focus. He wished he knew where Jarod was; he was fairly certain his brother was in New York City, but he didn’t know where. It seemed like everyone was in New York City now. 

If Jarod was in New York, then Lyle and Parker would be, too. Sydney and Broots would likely be with Parker. At this rate, Raines himself might even come up to join the party. Ethan shuddered at the thought. He could feel all the days of training and simulating rising up from the back of his mind like bile, and he closed his eyes and concentrated on putting them away again. He was free of that now.

The simulations resisted with a sound like jet engines in his ears. _I am not that man._

They struggled against him, clawing at his mind with the sound of grating metal. _I am not a monster._

And then they fell back into the box he’d reserved for them with the clattering of a rainstorm. _I am a free human being._

When he opened his eyes, Alexis was sitting next to him. She looked worried. “Just thinking,” he said quietly.

“You should lay down,” she said. “You’ve been sitting there for a long time.”

“I’m all right,” he assured her. He heard a set of footsteps at the door, then a key in the lock. “Your dad’s here,” he said as Rick walked in.

“Where’s Kate?” Alexis asked.

“She went home. Did you two eat yet?”

Alexis got up and walked into the kitchen. “No… the food just got here. I figured we’d wait for you.”

“Aw, you didn’t have to wait for me.” Ethan heard the harsh rustling of plastic bags.

He used the window as leverage to get to his feet, and then used the wall to shuffle his way to the kitchen. Once the initial dizziness of getting up wore off, he only had trouble getting his feet to actually move. He was almost to the end of the wall when Alexis came around the corner and nearly collided with him.

“Hey, now,” she said, taking his arm.

“Alexis, please. I can do it. I’m an invalid, not a cripple.”

She shrank back, and he realized he might have been a bit harsh, but she’d been taking care of him for almost three days now, and he knew she had better things to do than feed him eggs and toast and make sure he didn’t sleep too long. He could feel her worrying over him as he walked across the short empty space between the wall and the counter island. He used the counter and the barstools to shuffle along to the downstairs bathroom. He managed to get around the bathroom perfectly fine—if a little slowly—by himself, and when he came back out, he got to the kitchen table without any major mishaps.

The Chinese take-out was very good, and even Rick, who claimed to be a seasoned chopsticks user, was amazed by Ethan’s skill with the foreign utensils. When Alexis asked where he’d learned to use chopsticks so well, he just shrugged and said he’d spent some time in the Far East as a child.


	10. Chapter 10

Sydney sat facing the door of the coffee shop. Parker sat across the table from him, watching people walk by on the street. This was Sydney’s idea, and Parker didn’t have a lot of faith in it, but she didn’t have any better ideas, so when Sydney said, “That’s her,” Parker dutifully got up and got in line, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. The line moved sluggishly under the weight of so many of Monday morning’s coffee addicts. Parker managed to stay unnoticed until it was her turn to order. She got a standard coffee—she wasn’t a connoisseur—and wasn’t surprised to find Kate Beckett staring at her.

Parker feigned surprise anyway. “Detective Beckett?” she asked, as if she hadn’t spent the morning waiting for Kate to show up in the shop.

Kate blinked. “Um. Yeah. What are you—how—” Kate pressed her lips together and looked away, studying the murals on the walls. She refused to look at Parker until the barista had called her drink. “Do you have a couple of minutes?” Kate asked.

Parker nodded and looked around the coffee shop, her eyes locking with Sydney’s for a fraction of a second. He got up and Parker nodded to the now-empty table. “Do you want to have a seat?”

“Sure.” Kate sat facing away from the door. “How did you know her?” Kate asked.

Parker thought briefly about feigning a bit of ignorance, but she knew it wouldn’t do her any good. “You mean Johanna? I didn’t. My mother mentioned her a few times, so your name rang a bell,” Parker lied smoothly. “I didn’t know you were related. Is she—?”

“She was my mother,” Kate said. “She was murdered fourteen years ago.” She gripped her coffee cup, scratching the cardboard sleeve with a fingernail.

“Assassinated, made to look like a bad mugging. I don’t know who killed her.”

“My mother was killed when I was ten,” Parker told Kate. “I know who killed her, but I can’t do anything about it. I’d be dead in a second.”

Kate let out a short laugh. “You and me both.” She rubbed her chest absently. “I’ve had two attempts on my life already. I was shot in the chest a year and a half ago, and back in May the same guy tried to kill me by throwing me off a building.”

Silence fell over the two of them. Parker was at a loss for something to say that wasn’t harsh or cutting.

“You said Reynolds’ killer is untouchable.”

Parker nodded. “Yeah, well, he is.”

“Nobody’s untouchable,” Kate said.

“Maybe in your world.” Parker could feel the tension building already. Kate wanted her murderer, and Parker refused to give him to her.

“I could have you locked up for contempt, you know.”

Parker rolled her eyes. “If you want your killer, Detective, I’ll tell you what to look for, but you won’t find him.”

“I’ll find him,” Kate argued.

Parker stood up from her chair. She wasn’t going to sit around for this. “His name is Lyle. He’s missing a thumb because he crossed some Chinese mafia a few years ago, and he staged his own murder when he was seventeen.” She turned to go, but stopped and added, “You won’t catch him; he’s a ghost.”

Parker walked out of the coffee shop, dropping her full cup into the trash on her way out. When she walked across the street to the car, Sydney was nowhere to be found. A note was folded up and jammed in the door handle.

_Meeting up with an old colleague. See you back at the hotel. - Syd_

Parker crumpled the note up and stuck it in her pocket. She got into the car and drove back to the hotel, wondering if Kate Beckett was actually going to try to find Lyle.

* * *

Castle walked into the precinct to find Kate sitting at her desk, staring at her notepad. He could tell she’d been sitting there a while, and that she was somewhere else.

“Hey,” he said, sitting in his chair. “You okay, Beckett?”

Kate looked up. “Hmm? Oh, yeah. I just… I know who murdered Reynolds, but there’s no way to find him. He doesn’t exist.”

“What do you mean, he doesn’t exist? He shot a guy twice in the chest.”

“He doesn’t exist, just like that Parker woman doesn’t exist.”

This was too cool. “You mean the government doesn’t know about them?” He tried not to sound too eager, but judging by Kate’s face, he failed miserably.

“Castle,” she said, and she sounded like someone had punched her in the chest hard enough to make her cry. “You know what this means.”

He sobered. He did know. “Yeah, I know.”

“I have to tell Gates that we have no leads. I have to tell Barry Reynolds’ family that we may never catch his killer. I have to tell Amy Parkins’ family that we may never catch _her_ killer. And I have to come in here every day with the knowledge that a man who killed four people under _my_ jurisdiction is still out there because I couldn’t find him.”

“Kate, it’s not your fault. You said the guy doesn’t exist.”

“He exists in my books.”

Castle took the note pad out of her hands and set it on the table. With nothing to hold, her hands dropped uselessly into her lap. Castle took them in his own. “How many murder cases have you solved?”

Kate shrugged. “I don’t know. At least a couple hundred.”

“And how many of your cases have gone unsolved?”

“Maybe a dozen or two.”

Castle squeezed her hands. “You, Detective Kate Beckett, have one of the highest crime-solving rates in the NYPD, but that doesn’t mean you’ll solve every case.”

“That’s the problem!” Kate exclaimed. “I _did_ solve this case. I know who the killer is. I know his name. I know he’s missing a thumb because of an incident with Chinese mafia, and that he staged his own death when he was seventeen. I know who the killer is, and I can’t bring him in because he’s a ghost, and he’s disappeared into the ether.”

Castle rubbed a thumb across the back of Kate’s hand. “Listen to me. You are the best of the best, Kate Beckett. You solve all kinds of murders, but that does not mean you can wallow when you miss one. You gave this one your honest-to-God best effort, and you can tell those families that you know who did it.”

Kate nodded, looking away. “And then I have to tell them that he’s still out there, that he’s vanished and I have no way to find him. I have to tell _Gates_ all that.” She took her hands back and used one to prop her head.

“You can do it, Kate.” Castle sat back in his chair. “I know you can.” He smiled.

* * *

She’d just gotten back to her hotel room in New York when the hotel phone rang. “What?” she said, dragging out the vowel. It could only be one person; she’d made sure that no calls could be made to her room.

She’d been out all day—no Sydney, no Sweepers—trying to find out more about the connection between her mother and Johanna Beckett, but nothing had panned out. What she really needed was to talk to Kate Beckett again, but there was no way Parker was going to get the information she wanted out of that woman until the case on the Reynolds guy was closed. And the coffee shop was too public for the kind of information Parker needed to exchange.

“I heard you’re back in town,” Jarod answered.

Parker pinched the bridge of her nose. She didn’t want to deal with this, with him, right now. “What do you want, Jarod?”

“I want to know where Ethan is.”

Parker wanted a cigarette. “I don’t know where he is,” she snapped. She considered going down to the corner mart. It wasn’t far, and Sydney was still out, doing whatever he’d been doing since that fiasco in the coffee shop.

“Have you heard from him recently?”

“Since the last time you called, no.” She was getting very, very fed up with Jarod.

Jarod sighed.

“What?” Parker demanded sharply. A voice in the back of her mind suggested that she was fed up with the chase.

“I thought you’d have something,” Jarod said. “After all, you do such a fantastic job of chasing me.”

Parker firmly squashed the little voice. She was definitely fed up with Jarod. “Don’t you have something better to do? Help some poor, mistreated soul or right some terrible wrongs?”

There was a pause. “I’ve been trying,” Jarod said quietly, and hung up.

 _You run, I chase,_ she thought. _The same old story._


	11. Chapter 11

When Kate showed up in the coffee shop on Wednesday, she wasn’t surprised to see Hot Lips Parker already there, sitting alone at a table in the corner. Kate waited until she’d gotten her drink, and then she went and joined her.

“You were right,” Kate said.

Parker grunted.

“Why are you still here?” Kate asked.

There was a long pause before she said, “Why was she killed?”

“My mom? I don’t know. Just before she died, she was looking into something—I found her notes later—but I never made any sense of them. All I know is that some bad cops went to a lot of trouble to cover it up.”

Parker frowned.

“Why?” Kate asked. “Did you have another theory?”

Parker drummed her fingers on the table. “No.”

Kate fished for something to continue the conversation. “Why was your mother killed?”

“She wanted to move some kids out of a bad situation. She may have been working with someone from outside the—someone from outside. I don’t know.”

“And you think she was working with my mom?”

“I’d thought about it, but it seems a bit far-fetched.”

Kate shook her head. “When I was little, my mom talked about having a couple of boys—foster kids—stay with us. I remember being so excited to have brothers, even if they were only foster brothers, and then one day, she just stopped talking about it. I asked, but she wouldn’t say anything.”

“When was this?” asked Parker, leaning forward in her intrigue.

Kate thought for a while. “It was in kindergarten. I was five or six. It ended just before school got out. I spent most of the summer moping and complaining about being an only child.”

“April 1985?” Parker guessed.

Kate nodded. “Something like that. Why?”

“That’s when my mother was killed.”

* * *

Kate sat at her desk in the precinct, trying to catch up on paperwork between cases and having little success. She’d gotten a total of three forms filled out, and the stack in her inbox was getting taller and taller.

The boys were tossing paper footballs around, and Kate was sure there was something else they could be doing. Didn’t they have paperwork, too?

By the time Castle walked in at five, her inbox looked pretty much the same as it had when she’d come in that morning. She’d discovered that her mother was not, in fact, killed for the reasons she’d thought, and now the key to finding her mother’s killer lay with a woman who constantly rubbed Kate the wrong way.

“Hey. You ready?” Castle asked.

Kate sighed and pushed her chair back, dropping her pen back in the cup. “Yeah.” She avoided his gaze as she shrugged on her coat and wrapped her scarf around her neck. When she turned to leave, shouldering her purse, Castle put his hands on her shoulders.

“Whoa, hey… are you okay?”

Kate nodded. “Just, uh, had a lot of paperwork,” she said weakly.

Castle glanced at her still-full inbox, but didn’t push the issue. “Come on. Dinner should be there by the time we get there.”

“Um, thanks, but… I think I’m going to go home, actually.”

Castle blinked. “Oh, okay. Share a cab?”

“Sure,” Kate said. She offered no other information.

Castle frowned, and they lapsed into silence. Kate wasn’t in the mood to restart the conversation and, it seemed, neither was Castle. They caught a cab in front of the precinct, and he held the door for her as he always did. When the driver pulled over in front of Kate’s building, she and Castle exchanged short good-byes and then the cab pulled away, leaving Kate to go up to her apartment alone.

She locked the door behind her, put away her gun and her badge, and reached into her pocket for the small card she’d been carrying around all day. She stared at the card for a minute or so before pulling out her phone and dialing the number.

* * *

Parker’s phone rang. It was only six—much too early for Jarod to call, and he’d called last night anyway—so she answered with a short “Parker.”

“It’s Kate.” The voice on the other line was strained.

A corner of Parker’s mouth curled up in a smug little half-grin. “Hello, Kate.” She paused, savoring her little victory. 

“I need your help.”

“You need _my_ help?” Parker asked.

Parker could almost feel Kate’s seething glare through the phone. “Yes. I need _your_ help. I need to know who killed my mom.”

“Well, I’ve got a bit of news.” Broots had called earlier with an interesting piece of information.

“You could have called me,” Kate said sharply.

“I figured you’d call when you were ready to hear it.”

“Well?”

“Tomorrow morning at the coffee shop? It’s something you’ll need to see.”

“Yes, fine,” Kate sounded irritated and desperate—exactly what Parker had been aiming for. People were so much easier to manipulate when they were hanging at the ends of their ropes. “I’ll be there.”

Parker looked at the red folder sitting on the dresser and grinned. “Great.” She hung up and saw herself in the mirror. She realized that, with that particular mischievous grin, she looked like Lyle. Resisting the urge to hurl her phone at the mirror—or her dinner into the nearest available toilet—Parker picked up the red file and read the contents again.

* * *

Kate went to the coffee shop early the next morning. She’d barely slept the previous night, tossing and turning. What sleep she did get was plagued with uneasy dreams about her mother’s case, and she woke feeling more tired than when she’d gone to bed.

She ordered an extra shot of espresso in her drink and found Parker sitting at the same corner table as the day before.

“I’m here,” Kate said.

Parker tapped the red folder on the table with a finger. “I found some letters that my mother received from a colleague. None of them are signed, but they are dated. These letters were written shortly before she died.”

Kate reached for the folder, but Parker pulled it away.

“You can’t keep them. I’m not even supposed to have them.”

“Fine,” Kate said, and Parker pushed the folder toward her. Inside were photocopies of letters, many of them only a few sentences long, dated from November 1984 up to the first week of April 1985. Kate recognized the handwriting, too, from so many hours spent trying to decipher notes. “These are all in my mom’s handwriting.”

Parker nodded. “There’s something else about those letters.”

Kate looked up from the folder. “Besides that they’re only half of the correspondence between my mom and yours?”

Parker gave Kate a look that clearly stated that she was not a dullard. “I found those letters in a database. Every entry is stamped with the date of entry into the database. These letters were fed into the archives in January of 1999.”

Kate blanched. “When?”

“The tenth.”

Kate breathed slowly, trying very hard not to vomit. In the world of crime and murder, a world Kate was intimately familiar with, coincidences simply didn’t exist. “Who—?”

Parker shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“And it’s not, uh, not possible that it’s just because the database was new when the letters were put in?”

Parker shook her head. “The database has been collecting information since before I was born.”

Kate was not one to faint, or vomit in public, or any of those other embarrassing things people did on TV, but right now, she felt like she might vomit and faint.

“Excuse me,” Kate said, and walked out of the coffee shop. She held on to her coffee cup because it was warm, and it was only seven-thirty in the morning. There was no way she was going to be able to focus on paperwork today.

Kate Beckett had never faked a sick day in her life, but today, she called the precinct and told Gates she was sick.


	12. Chapter 12

Parker left the coffee shop, the folder tucked under her arm. Kate Beckett was nowhere in sight, and Parker had nothing else to do, no leads on Jarod, so she walked through New York City, her heels clacking on the pavement. She considered going back to her hotel, but it was a fairly nice day, and her last day off was six months ago—and it was forced on her—so she took a detour and walked into Central Park instead. The park was full of joggers and cyclists and dog walkers at this hour, and quite a few of the benches were occupied by newspaper readers and coffee drinkers. Still, Parker managed to find a seat next to a man with a newspaper and a leather jacket, and as she sat down, he turned the page, rustling the paper. The wind kicked up, blowing the page inward and exposing his face.

Parker gasped and coughed. Jarod smiled. “Good morning, Miss Parker.”

“Jesus, Jarod!”

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said, still reading.

Parker raised an eyebrow at the back page of the newspaper. “Hiding from someone?”

He folded up his newspaper a little awkwardly and tucked it under his arm in a mirror image of Parker. She tried not to think about how unsettling it was to watch him imitate her like this. “I’m being chased by the Centre. I’m always hiding from someone,” he said.

“Do you know anything about Johanna Beckett?”

Jarod ignored her question. “Do you know why the Centre wants me back so badly?”

Truth be told, she didn’t know for certain. He was their best Pretender, but Parker got the impression that Raines and the Triumvirate wanted him for other reasons. “I think we’ve been over this before.”

Jarod stood and nodded to her. “Nice to see you again, Miss Parker,” he said as he vanished into a crowd of tourists.

* * *

Ethan folded up his shirt and stuffed it into his backpack. He checked his watch again, and hoped Alexis didn’t wake up. He hoped she’d go to class today, study in the coffee shop, get back to her normal life. He still felt a little dizzy, but he could walk properly again, and he didn’t need to be disrupting Alexis’ life any longer.  
Besides, he could hear the voices again and they were practically shrieking at him, Central Park. He tied his shoes and stood up slowly, but not slowly enough to avoid the rush of darkness that had him leaning against the wall until his head cleared. He flipped the lock on his way out, and took the stairs down to the street.

He took a cab through Midtown, and realized that it might take him all day to find whatever he was supposed to be looking for. He stopped against a lamppost and closed his eyes, focusing on his Inner Sense.

“Ethan?” asked a familiar, deep voice behind him.

Ethan whirled, sending the earth spinning. He gripped the post, trying to keep the ground underneath him. “J-jarod!” he stammered as Jarod hugged him tightly. “Ow, ow, careful, brother.”

“Are you okay?” Jarod asked, brows furrowing.

Ethan nodded slowly. “I, uh, got banged up pretty badly a few days ago. Just been recovering. I’m still a little sore.” He rubbed his forehead.

“Are you staying somewhere?”

“I was, but—not any more.” Ethan ignored the pangs of longing for that spacious loft apartment that was so full of love and acceptance and family.

Jarod nodded. “Then you can stay with me.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ethan said hesitantly. “I’ve had to fight my way out of capture twice in the last week. I don’t want to make your life more difficult.”

Jarod scrutinized his half-brother for a minute before he said, “You won’t make it any more difficult, Ethan. I promise.” He looked away, and Ethan followed Jarod’s gaze to a park bench, where a woman in a beige coat sat, a red folder tucked under one arm.

“That’s her,” Ethan said. He hadn’t seen his sister in a year. He’d only had those two phone calls, and he missed her as much as he’d missed his brother. He started toward the bench, but Jarod gripped his arm and pulled him back.

“Not yet,” Jarod said. “Later.”

Ethan studied Jarod’s face, and the word echoed in his mind. Later… later… Ethan nodded and walked away, ignoring the growing hole in his chest where his lungs ought to have been.

* * *

Alexis rubbed her eyes as she sat up. Something didn’t feel right, and when she got up and went into the guest room, the bed was already made. She hoped Ethan had only gone downstairs, but then she noticed the penny. It was shiny and new, but someone had given Abraham Lincoln a disproportionately large handlebar mustache with a permanent pen. Alexis picked up the penny and took it with her, setting it on her night table on top of the note he’d left her on Tuesday.

Her dad was in his office, probably playing Angry Birds or Temple Run and pretending to write. Alexis figured she should go, too, and if she left in the next half hour and took a cab, she could be on campus in time for class. She grabbed a banana from the counter and went upstairs to change and get her things. She put the note and the penny in her pocket and went back downstairs.

The office door was open and Castle was in the kitchen when Alexis came downstairs. “Leaving already?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Ethan’s gone, so I should probably go to class.”

“He’s gone?”

Alexis nodded. “The bed was made when I got up, and his backpack’s gone.”

“Oh.” Castle shrugged and went back to searching the kitchen for something to eat.

“Bye, Dad,” Alexis said. She took the elevator down and hailed a passing cab. “Columbia University,” she told the driver. As they passed the park, Alexis felt the penny searing a hole in her pocket. She took it out and held it in her hand, and by the time the cab came to a stop, Alexis was crying. She paid the driver and went into the nearest bathroom to wash her face before class.

* * *

“Syd, where the hell have you been?” Parker asked when she met him in the hotel lobby. He was on his way up to his room; she was on her way to her hired bed.

“Miss Parker,” Sydney greeted with a smile. “I told you; I was visiting a colleague. Any leads on Jarod?”

Parker gritted her teeth and wrinkled her nose slightly.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’. What about your other… research?”

“I found someone who knows about her, but I doubt she’ll talk.” Parker folded her arms over her chest. When they were in the elevator, Parker asked, “Why does the Centre want Jarod back so badly?” she asked.

“That’s a dangerous question, Miss Parker.”

“That’s what I thought,” she sneered. “It’s not just that he’s a Pretender, is it?”

“I have no idea,” Sydney said. The elevator doors opened onto their floor. Parker wasn’t sure Sydney wasn’t lying.


	13. Chapter 13

Kate sat cross-legged on the floor, her murder board open in front of her. She’d uncovered so much about her mother’s murder, only to find that it was all a bunch of lies. She had to find out who killed her mother, and she hadn’t learned anything from Miss No-name Parker.

She could call Parker again, try to get through an entire conversation without vomiting, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to just yet. There was only one other thing for Kate to do if she wanted information about the case.

“Hello?” answered the man on the other line.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey, sweetheart. What’s up?”

Kate bit her lip. “Do you still have Mom’s old letter box?”

“Yeah, it should be up in the attic. Why?”

She hadn’t thought about having to explain why she wanted her mom’s old letters. “I ran into a friend of hers a few days ago, and she said there was a photo she’d sent in one of the letters. She wanted to know if I could copy it and give it to her.” It was a terribly poor lie, but Kate hoped her dad wouldn’t look too closely at it.

“Sure, but I don’t think you’ll find any photos in that box. When are you coming over?”

“Now?” she asked. “Unless you’re busy.”

Jim laughed. “I always have time for my Katie-bug. I’ll bring down the boxes. Do you want to stay for dinner?”

Kate knew she’d have a hell of a time keeping her secret if she stayed for dinner, but her dad’s cooking was probably better than take-out and was definitely better than forgetting to eat. “Sure. I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Bye, honey.”

Kate hung up and put away her murder board. Maybe her mother’s letters would give her clues.

* * *

Jim squeezed his daughter extra tight, the way he had when she was little. “Oof!” she said. “Hey, Dad.”

“Nice to see you, kid. How’s my Katie-bug?” he asked, shutting the door behind her and taking her coat and purse.

Kate smiled. “I’m alright. You?”

“Oh, I’m getting on.” He ran a hand through his graying hair, tilting the top of his head toward her. “Found another one of those blasted gray hairs this morning. I must be getting old.”

Kate laughed. “You’re not old.”

Jim smiled. “I brought down the letters and a couple of boxes of photos. They’re on the coffee table.”

“Thanks,” Kate said, walking into the living room and sitting down on the couch.

“What do you want for dinner? I’ve got pasta, potatoes… I think I might have the fixings for lasagna.”

“Pasta sounds good.”

Jim nodded. “I’ll get on it. Let me know if you need anything.” He left, and Kate turned to the letter box. It was a small, elegant wooden chest with an ornate metal lock. The key hung from the handle on a bit of string, and Kate fit it in the lock. The chest was full of probably hundreds of letters, bundled together with more string. Kate searched through the bundles, some thick, some thin, looking only at the dates. She pulled out all the bundles dated 1984 or 1985, and put the rest back into the box. Out of the five bundles, Kate immediately rejected the first one, a set of letters Johanna had written to her own mother during that time. The second stack were all signed by someone named Margaret, and there were only a handful of those, anyway. The next two sets of letters were unsent, addressed to Jim and to Kate: Johanna had always liked to write letters to them as a sort of journal. Kate had read them many times in the years since her mother’s death. Her dad must have put them in the box after Kate gave the letters back to him for safekeeping.

The last set of letters were still in the envelopes. She untied them and pulled the first one out of its envelope. According to the return address, it was from a place called NuGenesis in Delaware. The letter itself was written in a neat script, probably with a fountain pen, and dated April 23, 1984. It sounded less like a casual letter and more like a formal sympathy letter. From the text of the letter, Kate gathered that someone had died, and Kate remembered her parents—her mother, especially—were very sad about something that they never talked about. This must have been the reason… but who exactly had died?

Kate unfolded the rest of the letter, and a note fluttered out of the last fold.

_If you are ever in Delaware, let me know. I would very much like to get to know you better. - C.P._

Catherine Parker. Kate opened the next letter. It was in the same script, but from a different address. It, too, was signed ‘C.P.’. She put the letters back in their envelopes and set the stack aside. She closed and locked the letter box as Jim walked in.

“Pasta’s almost ready,” he said. “Have you found it yet?”

Kate nodded. “I think I found what I was looking for. I’ll set the table.”

* * *

“Dad?” Kate asked halfway through the meal, when conversation had come to a grinding halt after Jim had asked about Castle.

“Hmm?”

Kate pushed a noodle through the sauce with her fork. “Did you and Mom ever want another kid?”

Jim was silent. He stabbed a couple of noodles and stared at them. “We were happy with you, Katie-bug. You were plenty for us.”

Kate shook her head. “But did you ever want another baby?”

Jim sighed. “We couldn’t.”

“You’re not answering the question, Dad,” she accused. “Did you want another kid? I just want to know if—if you even wanted me to have siblings.”

Jim dropped his fork onto his plate. “Yes,” he said quietly, looking up at Kate. “But we couldn’t. Your mother went through a lot with you, and neither of us wanted to risk—” He stopped, and his eyes dropped to his plate.

“But you tried,” she said, trying to keep from lapsing into interrogation mode. The more Kate had thought about that first letter from Catherine Parker, the clearer it had become.

Jim didn’t respond for a while. He, too, was pushing noodles around his plate and not really eating them. “Yes. When you were five, we decided to try going to a clinic, but they told us it couldn’t be done. We looked into adopting, but that fell through, too. After that, we stopped trying and just focused on how lucky we were to have you.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Kate asked. It wasn’t an accusation; she’d just always thought her parents never wanted another child.

Jim shrugged. “We didn’t want you to feel like you weren’t enough for us, because you were, and that’s why we wanted another one. It sounds crazy, but—”

“No,” Kate said. It was all too easy to put herself in her parents’ shoes. “It makes a lot of sense.”

“I’m sorry we—I never told you.” He put his fork down, and Kate was pretty sure he had about as much of an appetite as she did. “I didn’t know you—”

Kate put her hand over her dad’s. “Don’t worry,” she said, squeezing his hand gently. “You were enough for me, too.”


	14. Chapter 14

Even though she was used to getting up at five-thirty in the morning, Parker wasn’t used to getting phone calls at six. “What?” she demanded.

“I went to my parents’ house.” It was Kate. She sounded on fire, determined. “My mom had a box of letters she kept in the attic.”

Parker rolled her eyes. “And?”

“I found some letters from a place in Delaware. They’re signed ‘C.P.’ ” Parker heard paper rustling. “It’s just… I’ve been reading them and—”

Oh, no. She was _not_ going to talk about this on a phone that was most likely bugged. “The usual place,” Parker interrupted. “One hour.”

“Wha—” Kate started as Parker hung up the phone.

Parker dressed quickly, grabbed the red folder, and walked down to the coffee shop. She sat at the usual table. Kate was ten minutes early, carrying a purse. Parker could see a stack of papers peeking out of the top. She ordered her usual coffee and came to sit down, but Parker stood up to meet her. “Not here,” Parker said. The coffee shop was too busy and it would be far too easy for someone to spy on them.

“But—”

Parker raised an eyebrow. “Or we could stay here and be dead tomorrow. Your choice.”

Kate nodded. “Fair point. My place? I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s not bugged.”

“And the other one percent?”

“Or we could stay here and be dead tomorrow,” Kate repeated. “Your choice.”

Parker narrowed her eyes, but followed Kate out. They walked the four blocks in silence, but the moment Kate locked her apartment door behind her, she asked, “What’s a Pretender?”

Parker stopped. “How do you—”

Kate pulled the letters out of her purse. “It was only mentioned once. The boys my mom was—they were going to come live with us.” She took out one of the letters and handed them to Parker. “It says they are big Pretenders, but the ‘P’ is capitalized.”

“This is my mom’s handwriting,” Parker said, scanning the first letter. “I'm amazed these escaped the Centre archives,” she breathed.

“The Centre?”

Parker took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. “If I tell you, and anyone finds out I told you, we’ll both be dead before you can say ‘duck’. Got that?” She was probably being a little harsh, but she wasn’t going to take any unnecessary risks. Her life was risky enough as it was.

“I figured,” Kate shot back. “You know, considering my mother was _killed_ for this.”

Parker wasn’t going to stand for this plea for a pity party. Not now, not ever. It was time to nip it in the bud. “I don’t know if you noticed, _Katherine_ , but my mother was killed for this, too. So don’t play the Mommy card with me.”

Kate’s nostrils flared and she shook her head. “This is no game, Miss Parker.”

“Oh, I know, honey,” Parker growled. “So I’ll just tell you what you want to know so you can go off on your misguided attempt at vengeance.”

Kate pressed her lips together and sat on the couch. She gestured for Parker to join her. When Parker sat down, Kate set the stack of letters on the coffee table and waited.

“The Centre,” Parker started, “is a corporation. It’s been run by my family for generations. They do… research. A few years before I was born, they found a combination of genes that would create a special brand of genius, which they could shape and mould however they wanted. They created Pretenders, human chameleons with the ability to become anyone they wanted to be. Then they used those Pretenders to determine the outcomes of different situations by way of simulations.”

Kate looked confused. “Why couldn’t they just use computers to run simulations?”

“Because these simulations always involved people, and Pretenders all have the unique ability to become anyone.”

“What, like masters of disguise?”

Parker shook her head. “No. The best Pretender they ever created—Jarod—could read a couple of textbooks on brain surgery during breakfast and perform one after lunch.”

Kate blinked. “Or read a book on nuclear physics and create a warhead.”

Parker barked a short laugh. “Not Jarod. He’s got a soft spot for the little guys. He’s done more than a few vigilante Pretends in the past. Probably in the middle of one now, wherever he is.”

“You said he was at the Centre,” Kate said, confused.

Parker adopted her best poker face. “No. He, uh, he escaped six years ago. The Centre has been trying to recover him since.”

“And by that, you mean you’ve been trying to recover him.”

Oh, Kate was good. “I and others,” Parker said.

“So this Centre… they’re the ones who killed my mom?”

Parker shrugged. “Most likely.”

“But it can’t have been the entire corporation. Someone’s in charge.” Parker could tell Kate was shifting into interrogation mode.

“Give the detective a prize.” Parker grinned sardonically. “If you want me to tell you who’s in charge, you’ll have to be much more subtle than that.”

“Give the woman a prize,” Kate mocked. “I have a couple of perfectly good lockup cells down at the precinct if you’d like to take your pick.”

“You arrest me one more time, and I’ll never say another word.” Parker knew she didn’t have to say it, that Kate wouldn’t actually arrest her, but she said it anyway, because she could.

Kate sighed. “Fine. You said it’s been run by your family for generations, but you’re not in charge; you’re a woman, and it’s an old corporation. You’re not really old enough for your parents to have gone naturally, so I’ll say your father’s in charge.”

Parker tried not to gag as she said, “Do you want a pat on the back, Detective?”

Kate narrowed her eyes at Parker. “No, I think I’ve got everything I need, thanks.”

“Going on your suicide mission now? Tell your dear mother I said hello.” It was low, Parker knew, but she had to get Kate to listen.

Kate seethed, but she didn’t say anything. Parker stood up. She’d had enough of this.

“Listen to me, because I’m only going to say it once. I only know him as Mr. Raines. He’s been killed half a dozen times, and he’s currently running the Centre. You’ve gotten your closure; revenge is out of the question.” She turned and walked out of Kate’s apartment, headed for her hotel room and another day of trying and failing to locate Jarod.

* * *

Kate’s finger hovered over the blue button on her phone. She’d gotten home late last night after they’d caught the killer using one of the victim’s credit cards to get out of the city. The killer and the victim had been friends, apparently, but their friendship had turned to animosity. According to the killer, the shot had been an accident: “If I’d meant to kill him, the bullet would have gone through his brain.” Still, his attitude over killing his friend didn’t lead Kate to give the D.A. a particularly favorable recommendation.

Sunday had been pretty busy, and Monday was achingly slow by comparison. She’d been thinking about what Parker had told her on Saturday, and she had a proposal to make—a proposal Parker probably wasn’t going to approve of. Kate was going to pitch it anyway.

 _We need to talk_ , said the message. She’d rewritten it a hundred times, and finally settled for the simplest way she knew to put it. Kate took a deep breath and tapped send.

While she waited for a reply—how long did it take to reply to a text message, anyway?—Kate busied herself cleaning her apartment, something she hadn’t done in at least a month. She was in the middle of vacuuming the living room floor when she felt her phone buzz against her hip. She checked the message with one hand, the other still pushing the vacuum cleaner.

_Fine. Time and place._

She replied with one hand and finished the last corner of the floor with the other. _Mine, now._ Kate stuffed the vacuum cleaner back in the hall closet. The knock came five minutes later.

Kate offered Parker a cup of coffee, but Parker turned her down. “I’m not going to like this,” Parker said, “so just get on with it.”

“You don’t have to like it,” Kate answered. “It still has to be done.”

Parker eyed Kate warily. “I stand corrected. I’m going to hate every second of this.”

Kate ignored her. She had a few facts to piece together before she presented the whole puzzle. “How long have you known Jarod?”

Parker blinked. “Twenty-eight years yesterday.”

 _In other words_ , Kate thought, _your entire life_. “How long have you been chasing him?”

“Six years,” Parker answered slowly. “If you’re going to tell me you’re surprised I haven’t caught him, save it. You’re not the first person to say it.”

On the contrary, Kate wasn’t surprised. “Does he annoy you?” she asked.

Parker didn’t respond, but Kate could see it in her face, in the way she shifted slightly.

“No," Kate said, a faint smile tugging at her mouth. "I’m not surprised you haven’t caught him. I’m surprised you’re still chasing him.”

* * *

_I’m surprised you’re still chasing him._

The words echoed in Parker’s mind, repeated in that oh-so-knowing tone of voice, as Kate asked other questions, received answers that probably hadn’t gone through any kind of filter, and laid out her proposal to take down the Centre. Every atom in the mass that made up Catherine Parker’s daughter screamed resistance against Kate’s plans. It involved doing the exact thing that had gotten Catherine Parker and Johanna Beckett killed. It involved attempting to leave the Centre, a feat which made leaving the mafia look like skipping through daisies. And, probably most unsettling, it involved Jarod. It sounded like it would probably involve hours of planning and plotting, hours spent with Jarod, hours which would revolutionize the phrase “try her patience”.

But after six years of trying to bring Jarod back to the Centre—and she was trying, no matter what Kate seemed to think about it—the prospect of having a normal life, with a normal job and actual days off, was starting to look appealing.

Parker shook herself. She couldn’t afford to think like that. The Centre had stood through hundreds of attacks, and who was she to think she could stop them now? Hell, talking about it was likely to get her in serious trouble. Actually doing something would get her killed before she could say “oops”.

“No,” Parker said, cutting Kate off in the middle of a sentence. “It’s impossible.”

Kate’s eyebrows looked permanently stuck halfway up her forehead. After a moment, she said, “Your mom didn’t seem to think so.”

“My mother had a soft spot for children. She wasn’t taking down the whole corporation.”

Kate didn’t seem to believe that. “Her letters say otherwise. According to her, rescuing the children was only the first part. Once they were out, she planned to bring the whole thing crashing down.”

“And she was murdered before she could get half the children out,” Parker said.

Kate folded her arms over her chest. “Your mother had one co-conspirator. We’d have at least one other, plus the two of us, and from what I hear, he’s the equivalent of a small army.”

Parker snorted. “So you’re saying that you think one extra person is going to bring the Centre down?”

“It’s a start,” Kate corrected. “You can’t tell me that in all the generations it’s been terrorizing people, the Centre has avoided stepping on toes.”

Parker shook her head. “It’s still too dangerous,” she said, standing. Kate didn’t say anything, but she looked incredibly disappointed. 

As Parker opened the door, Kate said, “Your mom gave her life trying to do this. We’ve got infinitely better odds, and you won’t even risk yours. Think about it.”

Parker walked back to her hotel in the cold October wind. The rain started halfway, but Parker was too preoccupied to care.


	15. Chapter 15

Kate stood behind the small crowd of people waiting for drinks. A tall man in a leather jacket came to stand next to her after he’d ordered. He extended his hand, and Kate eyed it warily. “I’m Jarod,” he said. “You’re Kate, right?”

Kate nodded and shook his hand tentatively. “How did you—?”

Jarod smiled briefly. “She called last night.”

“Who called?” Kate was still wondering how on earth Jarod had found her.

“Miss Parker,” he answered.

“She told you where to find me?”

“Well, no, but I’ve been keeping an eye on her. She’s not much of a coffee drinker.” He gave Kate an apologetic half-smile. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The barista called Kate’s drink, and Jarod walked up to get it for her. When he handed Kate the drink, a card was tucked into the cardboard sleeve. Kate palmed the card. “Thanks.”

“Let me know when she calls,” Jarod said.

Kate nodded and walked away. She took the card out when she was in the car. A phone number was printed on one side, and on the other side was a sketch of a paper bird.

* * *

“Where are you going?” Jarod asked.

Ethan gave his brother a smile. “Just going for a walk,” he replied. “I’ll be back later.” It had been three days since he’d left the loft, and he figured it was time to pay Alexis a visit.

Jarod didn’t seem pleased, but he didn’t object outright. Ethan checked his watch obsessively, picking up his pace so he’d make it on time. He hadn’t left a note; he was just going to show up this time. A surprise.

He waited outside the building for ten minutes. He thought maybe he’d missed her, or she hadn’t gone to class, or she’d left the building a different way, and he was about to go looking for her when she walked out the double doors. She was occupied with something on her phone, and he melted into the bustle of people around her, staying at her side and waiting for her to notice.

She turned onto a footpath, and he tripped on a rough patch of sidewalk. His grunt of pain—he’d stubbed his toe pretty hard, actually—made Alexis look up, and she yelped in surprise. “Ethan!” she squeaked.

Alexis threw her arms around Ethan’s neck, and Ethan faltered. This was a surprise, too. “Uh, hi,” he said, putting his arms around her tentatively.

Alexis seemed to realize what she’d done and stepped back, clearing her throat. “What are you doing here?”

Ethan smirked. “Surprising you.” He scuffed his good toe on the pavement, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry about Friday. I figured it would be easier to leave if I didn’t have to say goodbye.”

“Was it?” she asked.

Ethan blinked, lost for an answer. “It—I—” he stammered. He shook his head, trying to regain proper speech. “No,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Not really.”

Alexis nodded. “Well, you’re here now. Did you have anything in mind?”

Ethan shrugged. “Not really.” He gestured over his shoulder. “The surprise was, uh, pretty much it.”

Alexis looked up at the sky. “It looks like it might rain again.” It had rained earlier that morning, but the clouds looked heavy enough to rain some more.

“Let’s go for a walk in the park,” Ethan suggested.

“In the rain?”

Ethan shrugged. “Why not?”

Alexis smiled and nodded. They stopped at Alexis’ dorm on the way so her books wouldn’t get ruined if they were caught in the rain.

At the park, Alexis tugged Ethan’s sleeve and pointed to a portable gazebo. Ethan followed her over, curious. Beneath the shelter sat a man with a box of kittens.

“How old are they?” Alexis asked the man.

“Eight weeks,” he replied.

Alexis picked up a little calico and stroked its fur. Ethan watched her, and he couldn’t help smiling at the way she scratched the kitten’s head as the little thing mewled and clung to Alexis’ shirt.

“Here,” Alexis said, holding the fuzzball out to him.

Ethan shook his head. “No, I’m alright.”

Alexis gave him a Look and put the kitten against his chest. His hands came up reflexively, catching the animal just as Alexis let go. The kitten was soft and furry, but the claws dug into his chest through his shirt. He rubbed a thumb across the top of the crying kitten’s head and looked at Alexis. He was going to make some remark about how bad he was with animals, but Alexis was watching him with an expression he couldn’t decipher.

And suddenly it was gone, and Alexis was laughing. “It’s just a kitten, Ethan,” she said, taking the calico from him and putting it back in the box with the others. “It’s not going to kill you.” Still laughing, she thanked the man in the chair and they walked out.

“You never know,” Ethan said. “If it had been any bigger, it might have.”

Alexis laughed again, and Ethan decided he liked that sound very, very much. It wasn’t something he was used to hearing from her, perhaps because he was almost always injured when he saw her. He smiled innocently, and she nudged him with her shoulder. Her hand brushed against his, and he caught it.

Alexis gave him a funny look, but he tugged on her arm, pulling her under the safety of a tree just as the skies opened up and the rain poured down on top of the unsuspecting park-goers.

She tripped over a tree root when he pulled her under the branches, and she collided with him. He put his arms around her instinctively to keep her from falling face-first in the mud, and he stood her upright, his hands pausing at her sides to make sure she was steady. She giggled, a bubbly little laugh that was different from the other one. Ethan smiled.

Alexis looked at the rain, which was coming down in buckets and starting to leak through the thick tree branches. “Now what are we going to do?”


	16. Chapter 16

Kate got the call at five the next morning. “Beckett,” she said, her voice still thick with sleep. She scrawled the address Esposito gave her on the notepad next to her bed and dragged herself out from beneath the warm covers. After a short, hot shower, Kate pulled on pants and a shirt, put her hair up in a ponytail, and grabbed her gun and badge on her way out the door. She called Castle on her way to the crime scene.

When he arrived at the rooftop scene with coffee, Kate briefed him on the victim, a young man in his late twenties, who had been shot in the chest. Lanie told them that the angle of the shot indicated the bullet had probably grazed his heart, and from that, he’d bled to death.

CSU had swept the rooftop, but nobody expected to get useful prints. They caught a lucky break half an hour after the sun came up when Esposito found the murder weapon next to a dumpster half a block away. The gun was covered with prints.

Oddly enough, some of the prints on the gun were the victim’s. All of the others belonged to their top suspect. The boys went to check his apartment and bring him in while Kate stayed at the precinct and listened to Castle spin his usual wild theories.

“… and then our killer picks up the gun, says a few movie-worthy words, and shoots the victim in the chest.”

Kate rolled her eyes, smirking. “You make it sound like it’s a movie, Castle. It was probably a lot less interesting. The victim’s prints were consistent with holding the gun, and the killer’s prints were consistent with grappling for it. Add the bruising on the victim consistent with a fight, and you’ve got practically the whole picture.”

“Yeah, but why?”

Kate shrugged. “Could have been any number of reasons.” Her phone rang, and she picked it up. “Beckett.”

“Nobody’s home,” Esposito said.

Kate sat in her chair. “I’m checking him right now.” She pulled financial information on their suspect, but didn’t find anything. In fact, he had no activity in the last twenty-four hours. “He’s got nothing in the last day,” she said. “And there are no withdrawals, either.”

“Then we’re on our way back.” He hung up, and when Kate put her phone back on the desk, Castle looked questioningly at her.

“Killer’s not at his address… not that we expected him to be.” She got up and noted the lack of bank activity beneath their suspect’s name, then sat against her desk.

“How does anyone get out of town without paying for something?”

Kate shook her head. “I’m not sure, but he seems to have done it.”

* * *

There was an origami bird perched on the edge of Kate’s pen cup when Castle walked in. Kate was staring at the board, coffee mug in hand.

“Anything new?” he asked.

Kate shook her head. “The boys are still going through phone and financials. Everything is all tangled up, and it’s a mess. That, and I just don’t see anything else here.”

Castle stared at the board. He’d spouted off dozens of theories—some of them were, in his mind, actually quite plausible—the previous day, but he could come up with nothing new now. “I’ve got nothing,” he said.

Kate sighed. “Maybe the boys will find something.”

“Do you think they need help?” asked Castle. “If we’re not doing much…”

Kate nodded. Castle heard her phone buzz. “You go; I’ll be right there,” she said, putting the phone up to her ear. “Beckett.”

Castle went into the meeting room and took a seat at the table with the boys, which was covered with piles of paper. “Jeez. Looks like someone didn’t want to leave a trail.”

Ryan didn’t respond, and Esposito just glared.

“Can I help?” asked Castle. 

Esposito shoved a stack of paper at him. “You know the drill.”

And he did. When Castle looked out the window of the meeting room five minutes later, Kate was still on the phone, shaking her head. She seemed to be talking more quietly than usual, but she looked irritated. She hung up the phone, slipped it into her pocket, and joined the boys in the meeting room.

“You okay, Beckett?” Castle asked.

“Yep. Fine.” She sat down and pulled a stack of paper toward her. The four of them lapsed into silence punctuated by the occasional rustle of paper. Castle stole the occasional glance at Kate, trying to find any clues into the mystery caller or the conversation, but Kate was so focused on her investigation that she didn’t even seem to notice he was watching her.

* * *

“Beckett… Be there in a few.” Kate turned to Castle. “Lanie’s got the body.”

Castle nodded. Something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Kate had stopped staying over at the loft, even though she’d spent half her nights there since mid-June. She felt more distant, too. It wasn’t bad yet, but she got more distant every day, and Castle was worried.

Monday morning, for instance. He’d wanted to take her to breakfast, but she hadn’t answered her phone. When she finally called him back that afternoon, she said she wasn’t feeling great, but had insisted she didn’t need anything.

They were both silent on the way to the M.E.’s office, until Kate nudged him and commented, “You’re awfully quiet. What’s up?”

He shook his head. “Nothing,” he lied. He launched into a hastily-crafted theory about the case, which Kate deflected with her usual cynicism. She seemed fine, but Castle couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was going on.

* * *

Parker flipped through the red notebook again. Sydney inspected the origami bird. 

“Well, Freud,” Parker prompted. “What’s it mean?”

“Retribution,” Sydney said. “Jarod used to make these birds during his spare time at the Centre. It’s Onisius, the Greek god of retribution.”

“Onisius isn’t a Greek god,” Parker said, annoyed. “Nemesis is the Greek goddess of retribution.” Parker had been forced to take mythology in boarding school, and she still remembered a great deal of it.

Sydney smiled. “It doesn’t matter if Onisius is a Greek god or not. Jarod’s interpretation is what matters, as it always has.”

Retribution. Was it possible that Jarod knew about Kate’s proposal? Not that it mattered. Parker hadn’t changed her mind; trying to take down the Centre was dangerous.

 _Your mother gave her life… you won’t even risk yours…_ Kate’s final words echoed in Parker’s mind, grating on Parker’s nerves. Leaving the Centre wasn’t a risk; it was a suicide note.

“Miss Parker?” Sydney asked.

Parker shook herself, returning to the land of the sane and the living. “Jarod’s toying with us, as usual. Surprise, surprise.” She threw her hands up in mock enthusiasm.

Sydney toyed with the bird, flapping its wings experimentally. The up-and-down motion was almost hypnotic—until Parker noticed a spot of ink under one of the wings. She snatched the bird from Sydney’s hand and unfolded it, only to find that what she thought might be a note was, in fact, just splotches and scribbles. Parker threw the paper on the floor and ran a hand across her forehead, pacing.

This was all just a game to him. He was always one step ahead of Parker, and two steps ahead of the Centre. He wasn’t the one in the middle. As long as he was one step ahead of Parker, he was safe. Parker, on the other hand, was almost never safe.

“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor like that, Miss Parker,” Sydney said. “Is something bothering you?”

Parker shot a glare at Sydney. “No,” she growled. “I’m just peachy, thanks.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. A cigarette would have been wonderful.

Sydney picked up the paper from the floor and started folding it back into the bird. “It’s not Jarod on your nerves, is it?” he asked.

“Jarod’s always on my nerves,” Parker snapped. But it wasn’t just Jarod. It was also Kate Beckett, with her sneaky detective words that stuck in Parker’s mind and jumped out at all the worst times. Whenever she thought about all the times she’d been at this same point, leafing through a red notebook and staring at a cryptic package, Kate’s voice drifted through Parker’s mind: _I’m surprised you’re still chasing him_. And whenever she was reminded of Kate’s idiotic plan to get herself killed, all Parker could hear were Kate’s parting words.

Parker wanted desperately to pick up one of the vases, maybe that ugly one on her desk, and shatter it against the wall, but she didn’t really feel like dealing with janitors crawling around her office cleaning things up. 

* * *

Parker stared at her phone, willing it to ring. She’d made no real progress on Jarod’s whereabouts, even after talking with Broots, and had given up and gone home, where she continued to pace, her mind increasingly full of Kate’s words. There was no way she was going to be able to sit down, much less go to sleep. She would never admit it to another living soul, but despite the fact that every conversation with Jarod grated on her nerves, talking to him was a better cure for her insomnia than any sleeping pill.

One o’clock had come and gone, and yet her phone sat on the corner of the bed, silent and still. Maybe his sixth sense had failed him, but Parker thought it more likely that he was doing it on purpose. Maybe Lyle had caught him. The prospect made Parker’s stomach turn.

She picked up the phone and scrolled through her recent calls.

Would it really be such a bad thing if Lyle had caught Jarod? She could go back to the Centre, back to—what had she been doing before Jarod escaped? Of course, she’d be on the receiving end of a lot of cold fury from Raines. She could hear it now: “It only took Mr. Lyle a year to catch Jarod, and you, Miss Parker couldn’t do it in six years.” It didn’t matter that she’d been the one to wear him down. All the credit would only ever go to whoever brought Jarod back.

She pushed call back and, after a moment, brought the phone up to her ear. It rang four times before someone answered.

“Miss Parker,” Jarod said cheerily. “I was wondering when you’d call.”

“I don’t want to play this game, Jarod,” she growled.

“Which one?” Jarod asked. His voice had changed dramatically from his greeting. He sounded serious and raw.

Parker sank onto the bed, her elbows on her knees. “I don’t know,” she said tiredly. “What was that bird all about?”

“Onisius,” Jarod said. “He’s the Greek god of vengeance.”

Parker sighed. “Onisius isn’t a Greek god,” she snapped.

“I know,” he said. Parker realized he’d made up Onisius for a reason. She knew he had a reason, a motive for everything he did. New Greek gods were no exception.

“What does it mean, then, Jarod?”

“Why did you call?”

Parker pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m not playing that game, either. What does the damned bird mean?”

She could hear the smile in Jarod’s voice when he replied, “The _damned_ bird? How poetic of you, Miss Parker.”

He was dropping hints on purpose. She was supposed to figure it out. Onisius and Nemesis, one novel god and one established god, and suddenly it made sense. He was offering his help, accepting her offer—no, Kate’s offer—before she’d even made it. “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?”

“So why did you call?”

“Jarod,” Parker said. It was supposed to be a warning, but it came out more like a plea. She went into deflection mode. “Have you heard from Ethan?”

“I think that’s a moot point now,” Jarod said. He was clearly still waiting for an answer from Parker.

“You know why I called,” she told him.

“You got your answers. Let me know what you do with them.” Jarod hung up, leaving Parker still wide awake in her hotel room.

She forced herself to go to bed, and while she managed to get some sleep, she tossed and turned all night, dreaming of birds and gods and fire and vengeance.


	17. Chapter 17

There was a note taped to Alexis’ bedroom window when she woke up Sunday morning. _Gazebo, 10:30_ , it said. She wasn’t sure how Ethan had managed to tape it to the outside of her third-floor window, and she didn’t really want to think about it. She’d slept in, and it was already nine. She showered and dressed and swung by the dining hall for a quick breakfast on her way to the park. She went to the place where they’d seen the kittens, and hoped he didn’t show up concussed again. He was three minutes early this time, and he looked like he’d managed to stay out of trouble.

Alexis waved to him when she saw him. He smiled and lifted a hand to greet her. “Managed to stay out of trouble?” she joked, falling in step next to him.

“Yes,” Ethan replied. “I was hoping you’d get my note.”

Alexis nodded. “How have you been?”

Ethan shrugged. “Alive,” he said. “I’ve been staying with my brother.”

“You told me,” Alexis said.

“Oh, right. I suppose I did.”

“How is he?”

“He seems… off, somehow. It’s not very noticeable, but it’s there.” Ethan shrugged again. “How are you?”

Alexis waved her hands vaguely. “Oh, you know. I’m okay.”

“How are your classes?”

“It’s college,” Alexis said. “It’s a lot of work, but it’ll be worth it in the end. You’re still feeling okay?”

Ethan smiled. “Yes, I’m fine.”

Alexis thought he looked a little tired. “You’re sleeping well?”

“As well as I ever did,” he said. “I’m fine, Alexis, really. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Still do,” Alexis muttered.

“Why?” Ethan asked, as if he couldn’t fathom the idea of someone worrying about him.

Alexis blinked. “Well—I don’t know. I just do.”

“But why?” Ethan persisted. “You barely know me.”

“Because… I like you. I like seeing you, and walking through the park with you, and I’d miss you if you vanished one day and never came back.” _Or if you ended up on Lanie’s table_ , she didn’t say.

Ethan didn’t seem to know what to think about this. “Really?”

“Yes, really.” She reached into her pocket and took out the note and the penny folded up inside. She held the penny out to him.

He picked it up, one side of his mouth rising in a half-smile. “You kept it,” he said, amazed.

“Well, yeah. I wasn’t sure when you’d be back.”

“The note too?”

Alexis nodded.

Ethan didn’t seem to know what to make of any of this. They walked for a while in silence. “Does that make us friends?” Ethan asked finally.

“I should hope so.”

Ethan shook his head, his brow creasing deeply in his confusion. “But you… you were there when I was—when I woke up. Every time.”

Alexis nodded. “I had to make sure you were okay,” she said.

“Do friends do that?”

“Sometimes,” she lied.

Ethan shook his head again. “People who like you come to visit,” he said. “People who stay, those are people who—” He stopped. “Oh.” The cloud of confusion floated away on the cold, late-morning air. It was replaced by uneasiness, and that almost-vanished quality that he always got at the end of their meetings.

Alexis grabbed him by the hand, trying to anchor him in place. “Don’t go,” she said.

Ethan looked at her hand, but she didn’t drop his. “Alexis, I can’t—it’s not safe.”

“Then why do you keep showing up?” she demanded.

Ethan tried to pull his hand away, but Alexis refused to let go. He stopped resisting and said quietly, staring at his feet, “Because I like you. I like your laugh and I like feeling normal. And because I miss you every time I have to disappear.”

Alexis threaded her fingers through his. “Don’t disappear, okay?”

“I’ll have to,” he said.

“You could try saying goodbye like a normal person,” Alexis suggested.

“It’s hard,” Ethan said. Alexis noticed his eyes kept travelling to their connected hands. She squeezed his hand a little, and he blinked. “Goodbye is hard,” he repeated.

“It’s not so bad if you’re going to come back,” Alexis told him. He seemed to waver a little, like he might disappear then and there, but she tugged a little and they resumed walking, still holding hands.


	18. Chapter 18

Parker stood outside Kate Beckett’s apartment, feeling more than a little unsettled. She’d spent the day locked in her hotel room, wrestling with herself. Her Inner Sense had joined in, too, and sided with Kate. She’d finally caved, but she wasn’t about to dive in headfirst.

She took a deep breath and knocked lightly on the door. No sense in waking the neighbors. Kate opened the door and let Parker in, flipping the deadbolt behind her. Parker shed her coat and hung it on the rack before turning to the living room, where a tall man with dark hair sat, facing away from the door. Parker looked at the coat rack; a man’s leather jacket hung there, and she was surprised she hadn’t noticed it before.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Parker demanded.

“Hello, Miss Parker,” Jarod said. “Kate, I believe you’ve met… my nemesis.”

Parker didn’t miss the piercing, direct look Jarod gave her. There was no smugness there, and Parker looked away before she had the opportunity to think of exactly what was there.

Kate laughed. “Your nemesis? That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?” She brought a tray into the living room and set it on the coffee table.

Parker sat down as far from Jarod as she could manage. “I haven’t quit my job yet,” Parker said through her teeth.

Kate sat down between them like a referee. “Nobody gets to shoot guns in my house,” Kate said, pointing to the tray. “That’s a rule. I’ve already had one apartment blown up.”

Parker pulled out her gun, made sure the safety was on, and set it on the tray.

“Have you?” Jarod asked, showing his empty hands. “They say you shouldn’t put metal in the microwave.”

Parker was glad Kate looked only mildly amused at Jarod’s joke. “Wasn’t an accident. Crazy bomber a couple of years ago. I was lucky; it went off while I was in the shower and I heard it in time to duck into the tub.”

The room went silent, and Parker could feel the tension rising with every passing minute. They all knew why they were there, and yet nobody wanted to talk about it. Jarod had a piece of paper in his hands—Parker had no idea where it had come from—and had started folding it. She knew before the figure began to take any kind of shape that it was another one of his stupid Onisius birds. This one was smaller than the others, almost a miniature because of the size of the paper, but Jarod had no trouble making each fold with expert precision.

“That’s a nice hawk,” Kate said when he was finished.

“It’s not a hawk,” Jarod said. “It’s Onisius, the Greek god of retribution.”

Kate frowned. “Isn’t the Greek god of retribution—” Kate stopped and her eyes flicked between Parker and Jarod, and then she set her glass of water on the table. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and disappeared down the hallway.

Parker wanted to kick Jarod for that little party trick.

“You haven’t called your Sweepers,” Jarod said.

“What the hell are you doing, Jarod?” Parker demanded.

Jarod looked at the paper bird. “Origami,” he said. “The ancient art of paper-folding.”

Parker sighed, exasperated.

“You know, they say that to escape Zeus, Nemesis transformed herself into a bird.”

Parker wasn’t entirely certain, but she remembered something about Zeus also transforming into a bird to find her. “Do I look like I’m growing feathers, Jarod?”  
Jarod used her question, rhetorical though it was, to study her face. The intensity with which he studied her was unnerving, and Parker was relieved when Kate came back. She had a stack of paper about the size of the piece Jarod had worked on, and she dropped it on the coffee table with a thud.

Jarod grinned, looking sideways at Parker, and began the process of teaching the two of them to fold origami birds. Parker refused to participate at first, but Kate insisted, and Jarod wouldn’t stop looking at her with that unsettling stare, and eventually she gave in and let Jarod teach her to fold a paper swan.

* * *

Parker spent most of the next day pretending to look for Jarod. They’d all agreed it was better that Parker continue chasing him as long as possible: the longer they could go without forcing everyone on the run, the better. So she’d been talking to Sydney, showing up at one of Jarod’s “lairs”, and enduring an hour of lecture from Raines on how late she was to Jarod’s hideout, when Lyle had been there three days before. She was starting to get a headache, and she planned on a glass of wine and an early turn-in.

She saw all of her plans fly out the window the moment her eyes fell on the small origami bird on the dresser of her hotel room. She kicked off her heels and changed into something more suited for sleeping. Maybe she could fall asleep before anyone knocked on her door, but she’d barely gotten changed when she heard the knock at the door. She sighed, casting her eyes to the ceiling briefly before going to answer it.

Jarod stood outside, alone. “Where’s Kate?” Parker asked.

“Hello to you, too,” he said, smiling. It always irritated Parker how he smiled at just about everything.

Parker felt awkward and exposed standing in the doorway talking to Jarod. Anyone could walk out of any room and see them talking, and knowing Parker’s luck, it would be a Centre informant. She stood aside. “Don’t stand out there,” she said sharply. “Hallway’s probably crawling with Centre bugs.”

“Ten-B and both Twelves,” Jarod said as he walked in. “Plus Sydney.”

Count on Jarod to know exactly where Centre operatives were located at any given time. “What are you doing here?” Parker asked.

“How much do you know about my life?” he asked, helping himself to a seat on the end of the bed.

Oh, no. No, no, no. He was not going to do this again. It was bad enough over the phone, but in person? He was going to give her another ulcer. “Only what I need to know,” she said. “Which is a lot less than you seem to think it is.”

Jarod looked disappointed. He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again when nothing came out. His hands rested in his lap, and he stared through them at nothing in particular. The longer he sat in silence, the more his disappointment looked like desolation.

Parker sat on the bed a couple of feet away from him. “Whatever you’re looking for, Jarod, I don’t have it.”

Jarod looked up from his fingers, and Parker could see the raw pain in his expression. Did he always look like this when they talked on the phone? He raised a hand and his fingers brushed her face before returning to his lap. “I know,” he said, still looking sideways at her. “I just want to know who I am,” he added quietly.

Maybe it was the late hour, or the events of recent days, or the small part of her mother that existed in her, but the heart that Parker was rumored not to have broke a little seeing Jarod like this.

“You’re Jarod,” she said, encasing her heart in steel once more. It didn’t need to shatter completely. “You’re an arrogant bastard and a pain in the ass.” Her caustic comments, while completely honest, at least made him quit moping.

He stared into his hands a while longer. He seemed like he was on the edge of something, trying to decide whether or not to jump. After a few moments, he stood. “I should get going,” he said. “I can hear the bugs coming out of the woodwork.”

“If the Centre hears about this,” Parker warned, “you’re going to wish I was Nemesis.”

Jarod actually smiled this time, and Parker pretended that her irritation was natural and not manufactured. “I’ll remember that,” Jarod said. He hesitated for a fraction of a second before disappearing out the door.

Parker crawled into bed, exhausted from having to deal with Jarod face-to-face, and dreamt of paper birds.


	19. Chapter 19

If the Centre didn’t kill her for this, having to work so closely with Jarod for so long was certainly going to get the job done. Jarod had somehow gotten his hands on blueprints of about thirty percent of the Tower building, which was a hell of a lot more than she ever would have been able to get and yet still not enough. Jarod estimated they would need over seventy percent of the Tower blueprints, not to mention blueprints from a few other Centre establishments.

It was, in short, impossible, a fact that Jarod seemed to forget on a regular basis. Parker had reminded him a few times, but he just waved her off. She had resorted to muttering “impossible” and shaking her head every time he suggested something of the sort, which turned out to be all the time.

Kate seemed to be on Jarod’s side, which didn’t help Parker’s quest to keep their plans realistic. Kate seemed to think it was actually possible to get the other hundred or so blueprints they’d need to make their plans work. It was just shy of a miracle that Jarod had gotten any blueprints from the Centre, though Parker suspected he may have had help.

Kate came back from the kitchen empty-handed. “We’re out of Fritos,” she said. “I’m going to run down to the corner mart. Do either of you want anything else?”

 _Yes_ , Parker thought. This was the fourth time Kate had gone to the corner mart for something during their clandestine night-time meetings, and each store run guaranteed half an hour or so of tense silence while Jarod’s pencil scratched incessantly on paper and—or so it felt—on the inside of Parker’s skull.

Parker shook her head. Jarod smiled winningly and asked for PEZ, as usual. Kate nodded and looked questioningly at Parker, who answered with a challenging raise of the eyebrows. Kate shrugged and said, “Don’t kill each other,” on her way out the door.

“It’s going to be dangerous for you to keep your job soon,” Jarod said when Kate was gone.

“It’s dangerous for me to quit,” Parker said without pause.

Jarod set his pencil down and started to fold a piece of printer paper. “I’m sorry,” he said, creasing a fold between his fingernails.

“For what?” Parker replied sharply. For making her life difficult? For making her life dangerous? For existing?

“Your life has never been easy. In some ways, less so than mine.” He picked up his pencil and sketched small areas of the paper he was folding. “In a lot of ways,” he amended.

As difficult as her life had been, even as a little girl, she’d pitied the children trapped in the Centre. They were lab rats, parentless and tortured by the things the Centre made them do. But she, Miss Parker, was a princess. She was Daddy’s little angel. She had parents who loved her, and she got to go outside and eat ice cream and play with her friends and read whatever she wanted.

Jarod didn’t elaborate, and Parker didn’t prompt him. It was unsettling enough to know that Jarod pitied her. “And yet,” she said caustically, “here you are, making friends with someone who will inevitably make my life more hellish than it already is.”

Jarod looked guilty. “Sometimes,” he said, crumpling the paper tightly and then smoothing it out on the table, “it has to get worse before it can get better.” He folded the wrinkled paper expertly into a swan. The wrinkles, along with Jarod’s sketching, gave the swan a softer, more feathery look than the traditional flat paper.

“Cute,” Parker said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. She wished she were back in her hotel room, where Jarod wasn’t making references to inaccurate Greek mythology.

When she opened her eyes again, he was staring at her. After a few seconds of staring back and forth, Jarod asked, “Do you remember the time you snuck me out to the helipad?”

“Yes,” Parker admitted. She remembered everything, but she wasn’t ever going to admit it, and especially not to him. “It was freezing.”

Jarod smiled a little. “You pointed out all the constellations you knew, and I pointed out a dozen more.”

Parker nodded. She’d been impressed then by his knowledge of a sky he’d never seen in person. They’d stayed out there as long as they dared, shivering in the cold ocean breeze. Jarod had asked Parker a hundred questions about the things they couldn’t see beneath the starlit sky, and she’d tried to sound impressive.

“After I escaped,” Jarod said, “I sat outside for hours every night watching the stars. Sometimes I still do.”

Parker looked away, staring at the clock on the wall. The last time she’d done any kind of stargazing was with Thomas. After he’d been murdered—well, suffice to say she hadn’t really cared to look at the stars.

Jarod reached toward Parker, and his fingers brushed hers in a gesture like apology or sympathy.

Kate returned before Jarod made things any more uncomfortable for Parker. He went back to scribbling notes, and Kate handed him the package of PEZ refills before sitting on the floor and tearing open her bag of Fritos.

* * *

“Kate!” Castle called, jogging after her. “Beckett, wait!”

Kate stopped and waited for him to catch up. “What?”

“I thought you might want to go to dinner with me tonight. I’ve got the loft all to myself,” he said, trying to look lonely and pitiful. “And I haven’t seen you outside of the precinct in a week.”

“I can’t,” Kate said. “I’ve got a—a meeting.”

“A meeting?” Castle scoffed. “Kate, you disappear every night to God-knows-where and you’re exhausted by the time I come into the precinct. Please tell me you’re not chasing down something without me.”

“Castle…” Kate pled. “I’ll be fine.”

Castle shook his head. “That’s not an answer. I don’t want you to disappear down the rabbit hole again. Damn it, Kate, I thought we were past that!”

Kate reached up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, and walked away.

It was a promise, but it was also a refusal. If he wanted to know what she was doing, he was going to have to find out for himself.


	20. Chapter 20

Alexis was just as accustomed to surprises as she was to getting little notes everywhere. Today was a surprise, especially since he’d waited for her outside her last class the previous day, too. She threw her arms around him in greeting. He returned her embrace, and they fell in step, headed by default to Alexis’ dorm building.

“Two days in a row. What’s the occasion?” Alexis asked.

Ethan shrugged. “It’s a nice day.”

Alexis looked up at the sky, which threatened rain as usual. “If you say so.” She studied his face briefly. He seemed more calm than usual, and dusky circles were beginning to form beneath his eyes. “You look tired.”

“Nightmares,” he said quietly. “I haven’t been sleeping well. They’ll pass.”

Alexis took his hand and squeezed it once. “It’s been almost a month since I met you,” she said.

“I think I met you.”

Alexis shook her head, scrunching up her face. “Mm, no, I think it was definitely me meeting you.”

“Either way, I’m very glad it happened.” He smiled.

Alexis grinned. “Me too.”

They walked in comfortable silence, and after Alexis put away her books, they headed for the park. Alexis could tell something was on Ethan’s mind; he usually asked her a thousand questions about her life and her classes, but he hadn’t asked any of them today.

“Ethan?” Alexis asked.

“Hm?”

“You okay? You seem a little… distracted.”

Ethan nodded. “I’m alright. I just—” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

“You what?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it; it’s stupid.”

“I doubt it’s stupid. And if it is, I won’t make fun of you.”

Ethan shrugged, looking hesitant. “It’s just that it’s been almost a month and I haven’t scared you off yet.”

Alexis smirked. “Oh, that?” She shook her head. “You didn’t scare me off when you had a concussion. I doubt you could do it now.”

“That, too,” he said. “Why did you stay with me?”

“I told you. That’s what friends do.”

Ethan shook his head. “But you sat next to me for almost two days, and I know you didn’t get any real sleep. I might have been only half-conscious, but I wasn’t deaf.”

“Yeah, well, I like you, okay? I wanted to make sure you recovered like you were supposed to.”

“It can’t have been comfortable in that chair.”

She scowled at a light pole. “I was fine,” she said, a little irritated. “You weren’t.” The chair had, in fact, been decidedly uncomfortable, but Alexis would do it again in a heartbeat.

Ethan reached out and took her hand, stopping on the side of the walkway. “Alexis, I just want to know… what you think of me,” he said quietly.

Alexis stood in front of him. “I think you’re interesting and a little weird. I think you disappear way too often and you don’t say goodbye nearly enough. I think it’s nice when you surprise me, and it’s equally as nice when you leave me notes. I still don’t understand how you got that one on the outside of my window, and I don’t understand why you always leave. I like that you show up, but I’m afraid one day you won’t. I like it when you’re here, and I miss you when you’re not, and—” She stopped, sniffling and rubbing her eyes with a hand.

Ethan just looked dumbstruck. “You… really?”

Alexis just nodded, wishing she could have done this without crying like a baby.

Ethan took both of her hands and pulled her closer to him. “Alexis?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

His cheeks turned pink. “Can I, um—” He blushed deeper and turned away like a shy schoolboy. “Is it okay if I kiss you?”

Alexis giggled, nodding.

Ethan kissed her cheek, and Alexis raised an eyebrow. “Enchantée to you, too,” she mumbled, trying not to giggle like an idiot.

“I… was that not okay?” he asked, his eyebrows creasing.

“It was okay,” Alexis said. “But you, uh…” She shook her head. “Never mind.” She turned to resume walking, but he stopped her and pulled her back.

“If I can’t say ‘never mind’, then neither can you,” he said.

“Well, I just didn’t know that’s what you meant.” She shrugged. “But it’s okay.”

Ethan looked confused, but Alexis saw the hint of a smirk tugging at his lips. Her eyes widened and she punched him in the shoulder. “You—you—” she stammered, but she couldn’t stay mad long enough to even finish her sentence. “I cannot believe you,” she said, laughing.

Ethan grinned. “I wanted you to laugh,” he murmured conspiratorially. “I like it when you laugh.” She was still grinning up at him when he pressed his lips to hers.

Alexis had kissed boys before—she and Ashley had done plenty of kissing—but she’d never kissed Ethan before. Her stomach flipped, and she grinned wider. She felt rain on her face, and pulled away in surprise. “It’s raining,” she said.

Ethan smiled as more droplets fell on Alexis’ face. “So it is,” he said.

They retreated to the shelter of a tree for a while, hand in hand, nose to nose, before braving the rain and heading for the indoors.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter contains graphic depictions of violence.

Ethan stood underneath a flickering light in the middle of a warehouse. Outside the edges of the dim light, the world was dark. The voices in his mind were screaming at him to run, to hide, but he knew there was nowhere left for him to go. His heart raced, and he was short of breath. Blood dripped down his face and into his shirt from a gash on his face, where it mingled with sweat that stuck Ethan’s shirt to his back despite the November chill.

Ethan wondered how many Sweepers there were. He knew he could take out at least two barehanded. If he got his hands on a gun, he might be able to take out three or four more, but in this light, it was impossible to tell where they’d come at him from.

“You’ve been difficult to pin down, Ethan,” drawled a man’s voice from the shadows.

Maybe he could just run. There was a chance, however slim, that if he could get out of the light, he could slip away through the endless stacks of boxes in the warehouse.

Ethan stepped backward and a gun cocked somewhere near the voice. “You know, Raines said he preferred you alive, but I can tell already that you’re going to make this difficult.” A click of fingers flooded the warehouse with light, blinding Ethan long enough to allow a pair of hands to grab him by the arms and shove him forward onto his knees. His knees hit the concrete floor hard enough to bruise, but Ethan didn’t make any noise. He opened his eyes to see Mr. Lyle standing over him, gun held loosely in his good hand.

Handcuffs closed around Ethan’s wrists courtesy of another Sweeper. The cold metal bit and chafed as he was lifted unceremoniously to his feet and half-dragged to a shaded, dusty corner of the building among some very tall stacks of wooden crates. He was thrown roughly to the ground and Lyle rested his foot lightly on Ethan’s chest to keep him from getting up. “Where’s your little redheaded bodyguard now?”

Ethan gave Lyle a silent glare. He wasn’t surprised Lyle knew about Alexis, but he kicked himself for being so careless. He just hoped Alexis was safe, that Lyle hadn’t done anything to her.

Lyle moved his foot upward, turning Ethan’s head with his foot. “I think this one’s broken,” Lyle said, his foot moving back to Ethan’s chest. “Or maybe he just needs some motivation.” Lyle dealt Ethan a swift toe kick to the ribs before Ethan could react.

Ethan stifled a cry, his glare hardening. Lyle squatted next to him. “Tell me where Jarod is, and you might get to see your little gingerbread woman again.”

The pain in his side made it difficult to breathe. He would have liked to spit in Lyle’s face, except that he was more occupied with keeping his lungs working. “No,” he growled. Giving away his brother was out of the question.

Lyle studied the gash on Ethan’s face for a moment before poking it with the muzzle of his gun. “Come on, _little brother_ ,” Lyle sleazed, applying enough pressure to Ethan’s cut to open it again. Ethan gritted his teeth as his own blood trickled just below his eye, dripping onto the floor.

“Never,” Ethan said through his teeth.

“I really don’t want to kill you,” Lyle said. “Raines will be so much happier if I bring you back alive.” He stood up and strutted around Ethan. “Still, you’re not as important to him as Jarod is, so if I have to go to extremes, I certainly will.” Lyle hefted his gun in his hand, inspecting it casually. “Where’s Jarod?” Lyle asked, flipping the safety back on.

Ethan didn’t respond. Lyle put his gun away, grinning wickedly. He drew out a penknife and flicked it open. “Uncuff him,” Lyle commanded. His grin grew along with the sick feeling in Ethan’s stomach. “I’ve got a present for little Ethan.”

One of the Sweepers took the cuffs from Ethan’s hands, and Lyle flipped the knife end over end, holding it out to Ethan. “Take it,” he said, his voice low. “Protect yourself.”

Ethan was well aware that even his training as a killer wouldn’t be enough to overcome a dozen Sweepers and Lyle—not in his condition, anyway. He’d be lucky to stand up straight. He made no moves to take the proffered knife.

“Take. It,” Lyle demanded. “Or I’ll have to tell your little belle you died like a coward.”

Ethan pushed himself up a little and spat on Lyle’s hand. “No.” Lyle was going to kill him anyway; Ethan wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of a show.

“Have it your way.” Lyle rolled his eyes and put the knife away, walking away from Ethan.

Ethan struggled to get to his feet. His ribs were definitely broken, but he was fairly sure his lungs were still okay, as long as he didn’t breathe too deeply. He was almost upright when Lyle spun on his heel and landed a kick square in Ethan’s chest. Ethan flew backward, but with his damaged ribs, he wasn’t able to tuck into a roll. Instead, he hit the floor and skidded a few inches. He managed to keep from smacking his head into the concrete, but only just.

“You’re getting soft,” Lyle remarked. “You’ve still got time to save yourself. Tell me where Jarod is, and I’ll let you live.”

Ethan knew Lyle’s reputation, and “let you live” was not part of it. Not that Ethan would give away the brother who had taken care of him. He groaned and worked his way off the floor again. He managed to get all the way to his feet, but Lyle had put him in a corner between an impossibly tall wall of wooden crates and the wall of the warehouse building.

Ethan wiped blood away from his eyes, flicking it off his hand onto the wall.

“No?” Lyle asked. “Suit yourself.” He took out his gun, flicked the safety off, and pointed it directly at Ethan’s… knee? “I seem to recall you kneecapped a few of my Sweepers in the recent past,” Lyle explained. “Now, you only have two kneecaps, but I guess that’ll just have to do.” He cocked the gun and put his finger on the trigger. “Where’s Jarod?”

“No,” Ethan repeated.

The shot rang through the warehouse. Ethan had been grazed by a couple of bullets before, and was surprised that this one hardly hurt at all, though it brought him to the ground and left him breathless. Blood pooled beneath him, staining the dirty concrete floor.

Lyle stood in front of him, about ten feet away, like a challenge. _Get up_ , Lyle’s posture said. _I would so love to knock you down again._ Ethan struggled to stand on his good leg, and Lyle watched with boyish glee in his eyes. 

“Call Mommy and Daddy—baby brother’s standing up all on his own,” Lyle mocked. “Oh, but Mommy and Daddy are dead.” He raised the gun again, this time pointing it at Ethan’s good knee. “Where’s big brother, hmm? Tell me where Jarod is.”

“No,” Ethan said.

Lyle shrugged. “If you say so.”

The second shot echoed through the building and Ethan crumpled to the ground. He tried to catch himself with his hands, but he slipped on the pool of blood beneath him and ended up on his back, breathless. He didn’t try to get up this time. Lyle came to stand over him. “This is your last chance, Ethan.”

“You’re going... to kill me... anyway,” Ethan managed.

“Mm… maybe.” Lyle paused. “But I wouldn’t have to if you’d tell me where Jarod is.”

“Never,” Ethan said.

“You could see Carrots again,” Lyle offered. “Though she won’t thank you for getting yourself so beat up.” Lyle put his foot on Ethan’s knee and gave it a little pressure.

Pain exploded in Ethan’s knee, but he didn’t give Lyle the satisfaction of a response. Lyle still had the gun held limply in his good hand, and if it weren’t for the fact that he’d been shot in both legs, Ethan could have easily kicked it, caught it, and shot Lyle dead on the spot.

Lyle probably knew it, too. “Oh, you know what?” Lyle gave Ethan a devilish grin. “Maybe I’ll see if your girlfriend knows where Jarod is.”

Ethan glared at Lyle, wishing he could speak over the roar of pain in his ears.

Lyle shrugged. “It’s your funeral.” He aimed the gun at Ethan’s chest. “By the way, you were right. I _am_ going to kill you, and it’s going to hurt.”

Two more shots rang out, and as Lyle walked away with his team of Sweepers, Ethan felt the world grow gradually colder. Pain blossomed in his chest, and he was acutely aware of an astonishing amount of blood leaking out of him. It was getting increasingly harder to breathe, and spots danced in front of Ethan’s eyes. He fought to get enough air, but he eventually succumbed, and darkness washed over him beneath the bright warehouse lights.


	22. Chapter 22

Parker woke abruptly. She was freezing and sweating, and she felt sick; not just under the weather, but really, honestly _sick_. She only had time to notice that she felt this horrid before her Inner Sense told her why.

She called before she could stop herself. He was supposed to be in New York, and she was stuck in Blue Cove. 

“Parker?” Jarod answered after the fourth ring. He sounded surprised, but his voice had none of its usual mockery.

Parker froze. She couldn’t _tell_ him—she wasn’t even sure if it was true. But she’d called him in a panic and now she was sitting on the phone like a mute idiot. She groped in her mind for something to say. A noise came out of her mouth instead, dribbling past her lips without her permission, a sound of desperation.

“Stay there,” he said, and hung up.

Parker dropped her phone on the table, shivering. Was it really this cold in her house? She turned up the thermostat and wrapped herself in a blanket.

Jarod knocked on her front door fifteen minutes later and she went to let him in. She didn’t look at him or attempt to say anything. He took her by the shoulders and sat her down on the sofa. “What happened?” he asked, sitting next to her.

Parker shook her head. “Must have been an—an awful nigh-nightmare.” She cursed the stammer in her voice, wrapping the blanket tighter. 

Jarod put a hand against her forehead. “You’re freezing,” he said.

Parker tried to glare at him, but she was pretty sure it looked more like a grimace. “Where’s Ethan?” she asked.

Jarod shook his head. “He’s in New York. You don’t think something happened to him?”

Parker shivered. “I felt it,” she whispered.

“Your Inner Sense.” He was trying to be detached, factual, but Parker knew he cared about Ethan, too, maybe more than she did.

“Jarod,” she said, her voice cracking. “He’s dead.” Tears stung her eyes, and for once, Parker didn’t care if he saw them.

Jarod shifted closer to her and put an arm around her shoulders. She turned into him, still shivering. “We have to find him,” Parker said.

“I’ll find him,” Jarod said. “I’ll go tomorrow.”

Parker sat up straight, glaring at Jarod. “You want to leave him there, in New York?” she growled. “I was under the impression you _cared_.”

“I do, but he’s already dead, and there are things I have to do here before I go back to the city.” Jarod stood and started for the door.

“Don’t,” Parker said flatly. Jarod turned and Parker stood, shifting the blanket higher on her shoulders. “It’s not going to be safe out there,” she added lamely, trying not to sound emotional.

“It’s never safe for me,” Jarod reminded her. He came to stand in front of her. “It’s okay to feel emotional.”

“I’m not _emotional_ ,” Parker lied, knowing full well even an idiot would see through it. “Forget it. Whatever.” She waved a hand dismissively and went upstairs to sit against her headboard.

Parker didn’t hear the door, and after a few minutes, she heard Jarod on the stairs. He stood in her doorway, looking questioningly at the empty space on the bed. Parker shrugged. He toed off his shoes and sat up against the headboard with her. She still felt sick, and with it came strong fatigue, but she couldn’t let herself sleep.

She heard Jarod talking, but she had no idea what he was saying. Parker thought he might have been talking for hours, his voice the only noise in the empty, quiet room—and the only noise in her head. She fell asleep some time later, and when she woke up stretched out across the pillows, Jarod was gone. A paper bird, a miniature Onisius, sat on the bedside table.

* * *

 

Kate strode up to the warehouse, coffee in hand. She flashed her badge and crossed the tape. Lanie and the boys were already at the scene. Kate nodded to Esposito, who was questioning some workers, and approached Ryan. He looked uncomfortable and a little confused. “Who’s our vic?” Kate asked.

Ryan shifted from foot to foot nervously. “White male, about five-seven, probably two hundred pounds. Workers found him early this morning when they came in to move some crates.”

Kate looked around for her favourite medical examiner, and saw her emerge from behind some wooden crates.

“Where’s the body?” Kate asked.

Lanieled Kate around the wall of wooden crates, where a young man, probably in his early- to mid-twenties, lay in a pool of blood. “From what I can tell,” Lanie reported, “he was shot in both knees, and then in the chest. He’s got a cut on his face, too. Looks like it’s not much older than the GSWs.”

Kate was about to ask if he had any identification when Castle strode around the corner with two paper coffee cups, whistling merrily. He grinned at Kate, and then he saw the murder victim.

The coffee cups hit the ground in unison, soaking the bottoms of Castle’s pant legs and mixing with the near edge of the pool of blood.

“Castle?” Kate asked. She’d never seen him so affected by a shooting.

“No,” he breathed. “No, no, _no_.” He squinched his eyes shut. “Please tell me you have an I.D.”

“John Doe,” Lanie said. “No I.D., no wallet, no phone. Unless you have other information…”

Castle’s voice was shaky, and Kate moved to get him away from the crime scene. “His name is Ethan. He’s—he _was_ —Alexis’s friend. Boyfriend, I think, now.”

Lanie stripped off her gloves and pulled out her phone. Kate steered Castle away from the scene, around the wall of boxes. He had none of his usual boyish energy; for once, he actually looked his forty-some years. He didn’t say anything, and Kate held his hand until Lanie came around the corner.

“I called Alexis and told her not to come in today,” Lanie says.

“Thank you,” Castle croaked. “She doesn’t need to see that.”

“Time of death?” Kate asked Lanie.

“I’m gonna say between two and four this morning.”

“Closer to four,” Castle corrected, his voice rough but controlled. “He was at the loft until about two; he and Alexis were watching TV. He’s got sweat stains, so he must have been running. It would take at least an hour to walk here from the loft, and he won’t take a cab unless someone’s with him.”

Kate squeezed his hand and looked to Lanie.

“I won’t have any more information till I get him back to the lab.” The long sound of a zipper closing came from the other side of the crates. “That’s my cue.”

“I’ll go with you,” Castle said suddenly.

“Castle?” Kate asked.

“Back to the morgue. Alexis isn’t going to give up a day of her internship that easily. I might be able to take her to lunch or something.”

Lanie nodded. Kate caught Castle by the arm and fished a small evidence bag out of her pocket. “There wasn’t anything in his pockets, but we found this in his hand,” Kate said. “Does it mean anything to you?”

It was a penny, marked with a zero on one side, but Castle didn’t see any significance in it. “No.”

“Alexis?”

“She might know,” Castle said, “but Ethan’s a closed book.” He took out his phone and snapped a photo of each side of the coin, then followed Lanie to the coroner’s van.

Her job done, Kate walked away from the scene. A figure, ensconced in the shadows of some boxes, whispered to her. She went carefully to investigate, hand at her hip, to find Jarod hidden among the crates.

“Is it Ethan?” he asked. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.

Kate nodded. “How do you know him?”

“He’s my half-brother,” Jarod said sadly. “And Parker’s.”

“Seriously?” Kate was amazed so many people seemed to know this Ethan. “How?”

“My father, her mother. It’s a long story.” Jarod shook his head briefly. “What happened to him?”

“He was—” Kate cleared her throat. “He was shot twice in the chest.”

“Lyle,” Jarod swore. “I knew it.” He looked angrier than Kate had ever seen him.

Kate decided against mentioning the shots to the knees. She pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “Ethan’s case isn’t going to go anywhere.”

Jarod shook his head. “No, it’s fine.” He glared past Kate. “Lyle’s going to need a special brand of justice.”

“We can’t keep doing this,” Kate said. “You’re next on his list.”

“I’ve been free for six years,” Jarod reminded her. “I’ll be fine.”

“And Parker?” Kate asked.

“What about her?”

“What happens when they discover she’s actually working _against_ them? Lyle’s going to go after _her_ to get to you.” Kate sighed. “I’m not an idiot. Onisius and Nemesis? Come on, Jarod. And you can bet Lyle knows it, too.”

Jarod looked defensive, vulnerable for a fraction of a second before he set his jaw and said, “That’s why we can’t stop now.”

“That’s why we _have_ to stop now.”

“No,” Jarod said firmly. “We’re long past the point of no return.” He flexed his fingers once. “We’re going to have to start soon. Waiting is getting too dangerous.”

Kate grimaced, but she’d chosen her path, and she wasn’t going to jump ship at the first sign of trouble. “I’ll be ready.”


	23. Chapter 23

Something was wrong, and Alexis knew it. Lanie would never tell her to take the day off. At least, not before it started. The morgue was always busy, and Alexis frequently worked more hours than she was supposed to. When she walked in the door and saw her dad sitting in the lobby, with Kate nowhere in sight, she panicked. “Dad? Where’s Kate?”

“She’s up at the precinct,” Castle said. “I told her I wanted to wait here. I thought you might want to go to lunch.”

Alexis shook her head. “Just tell me what’s going on,” she said, the panicky feeling growing in her chest.

Castle hesitated. He had that look on his face, the one that came before really bad news.

“Dad, what is it?” she asked, nearly in tears already. If it wasn’t Kate, who could it— “No. No, Dad, please.” She shook her head, her hands flying to her mouth. She wanted to vomit. She knew by the look on his face exactly what he was afraid to tell her.

“Alexis,” Castle started, but Alexis was already heading for the exam room. “Alexis, wait!”

She flew through the hallways and flung the door of Lanie’s exam room open. Her eyes went to the table, where the body was covered with a sheet. “Tell me it’s not—not him.”

Lanie walked over to Alexis. “Go home, honey.”

Alexis tried to push past the M.E., but Lanie stood in her way. “No! I want to see him.”

“Alexis, I don’t think—”

“Please,” Alexis said quietly.

Lanie sighed. “Alright.” She lifted the sheet and folded it back, exposing the face. Ethan’s face.

Alexis’ vision blurred. “Who did this?” she asked her dad, turning away from the examining table.

“I don’t know, pumpkin. Kate’s going to find out.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“He was shot,” Castle said quietly. He pulled out his phone and showed Alexis a picture of a penny. “That was in his hand.”

Alexis stifled a sob. “He _knew_ ,” she squeaked. She collapsed against her dad, sobbing into his chest. He guided her to a chair, and after a while, she was able to shove the image aside long enough to explain, “When we first met, he said he’d turn up again like a bad penny. He left me a note a few days later.” She took the note out of her pocket. “When he vanished after that concussion, he left a penny on the pillow.” She let out a nervous laugh despite herself. “He drew a halo on this one.” Alexis felt the tears coming back in full force. “He knew he was going to die,” she said, her voice cracking and finally giving way to tears at the end. She slumped in the chair, trying to curl up into herself. 

Castle gathered her up in his arms and carried her home.

At the loft, Castle took off Alexis’ shoes and tucked her into his bed. She’d fallen asleep shortly after they’d gotten in the cab, and Castle had carried her up. It had been tougher than he’d expected; she wasn’t very heavy, but she wasn’t a little girl any more, either.

He couldn’t sleep, so he dragged his desk chair into the bedroom and propped his laptop on his lap. Gina would be cracking the whip on the next Nikki book soon, but Castle knew that if he started now, the plot would look suspiciously like this double-shot serial killer. Maybe, though, that wasn’t such a bad thing. He could change the killer’s M.O., make him a little more findable, and get the justice and closure they clearly weren’t going to get in the _real_ world.

He put his fingers to the keyboard and started planning.

* * *

 

Castle woke up the next morning at the same time as Alexis. “Dad?” she said sleepily.

“Hey, pumpkin,” he said.

Alexis scooted closer to her dad and he put his arms around her. Memory crossed her face, and she dissolved into tears before falling asleep again.

Castle’s phone made a racket on the night table a few minutes later. It was Kate. “Hey,” he answered quietly.

“Did I wake you?” Kate asked. “You sound tired.”

“No, no,” he said, trying to move away from Alexis. “Alexis is asleep in my bed.”

“How is she? Lanie told me she didn’t take it very well.”

Castle glanced at his sleeping daughter. She looked like a larger version of the little girl she used to be, her face still splotchy and red. “She fell asleep in the car on the way home. I’m worried about her. Do you think she’ll be okay?”

Kate sighed. “Castle. Would you be okay if it was me?”

It _had_ been her once, almost. He still remembers it vividly. The fact that Ethan hadn’t made it… “I don’t know what to do,” he confessed.

“Stay with her,” Kate said. “I’ll be over in a bit.”

“Thanks,” Castle said. He hung up and set the phone on the table. Alexis tossed and her face scrunched up the way it used to when she cried. Castle found one of her hands and held it in both of his own.

Castle was thankful she had only seen Ethan’s face. She didn’t know yet where they’d found him or how he’d died. Castle knew some of the details—Kate had called him while he was writing and given him Lanie’s report—and they were horrible even for a murder. There were signs, Lanie had said, that Ethan had been standing when he’d been shot in the legs, and the fact that neither of the shots to the chest were instantly lethal pointed to a strong motive for the serial killer beyond just serial killing.

Castle was puzzled, but Kate seemed less frustrated than she usually did with anomalies like this. She’d told him it would be impossible to find the killer, which sounded very unlike Kate, and Castle began to wonder who she thought the killer was.

Half an hour after he’d gotten off the phone, he heard Kate let herself in with her spare key. She dropped a couple of things on the table and came into the bedroom. “Do you want me to make you something?” she asked quietly.

“You don’t have to,” Castle protested. “I can get up.”

Kate shook her head. “She’ll need you when she wakes up. Just stay.” She gave him a little smile and left.

Alexis stirred. “Dad, was that Kate?”

“Yeah.” Castle brushed his daughter’s hair out of her face. “She’s making some breakfast.”

“I’m not hungry,” Alexis mumbled. “I wanna sleep.”

“That’s okay. You go back to sleep.”

Alexis closed her eyes and nodded. “Okay.”

* * *

When Alexis woke, the clock on the table read eleven-thirty. She crawled out of her dad’s big bed and shuffled through the office into the living room. She was still in her scrubs, and she desperately wanted to change out of them into something that didn’t remind her so much of… _things_.

It was dark outside, and Alexis realised she’d slept a lot longer than she’d thought. That, or the apocalypse had come a few months early. Gram was on the couch with a glass of wine and a book; she offered Alexis a smile. “Where’s Dad?” she asked.

“Kitchen,” Castle called. Alexis shuffled to the counter as her dad emerged from the pantry. “Are you hungry?”

Alexis shrugged. She figured she should eat something, since she’d been asleep for over twenty-four hours. “Not really,” she mumbled, resting her head on her arms. “Can I have toast or something?”

“Of course,” Castle said. “Anything on it?”

Alexis shook her head and Castle put a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster. When they popped out, Castle served them on a small plate. Alexis nibbled the corner of one, but all she could think about were her scrubs and the morgue and the penny and—

Castle put a hand on her arm.

She wiped her arm with her sleeve. She needed to get something else to wear. “I’ll be right back,” she said. She went upstairs to her room, ignoring the open guest room door, and dug through her drawers. The first three t-shirts she pulled out were ones she’d worn when _he_ had stayed with her, but she found one at the bottom that she hadn’t worn in at least a year. She threw the offending articles in the back of her closet, changed, and went back downstairs, tossing her scrubs in the laundry hamper on the way.

She ate both pieces of toast, but she didn’t feel much better. Gram finished her glass of wine and went to bed, giving Alexis a wordless hug on the way. Castle went into the office to write a bit, and told Alexis she was free to sleep in his bed if she wanted.

“I think I’ll go to bed now, actually,” she said, following her dad into the office.

Castle accepted a hug from his daughter. “I love you, Alexis,” he said, squeezing her tightly.

“I know,” she said. “I love you too, Dad.”

As she walked through the living room, she stared at the empty spot in front of the window where Ethan liked to sit. She slowed for a moment, remembering, then shook her head and went upstairs. She brushed her teeth, crawled under her blankets, and tried to sleep.

* * *

Kate was sitting at the counter and Castle was making breakfast when Alexis came downstairs Monday morning. Alexis avoided looking in the direction of the living room as she passed it and sat next to Kate.

“Morning, pumpkin,” Castle said. “Hungry?”

Alexis still didn’t have much of an appetite, but she’d need to eat, and she needed to try to make it to class. “A little,” she said, shrugging.

“How are you feeling?” Kate asked.

Alexis shrugged. “I’m okay. How’s the investigation going?”

Kate and Castle both hesitated. “It’s, uh, it’s going,” Kate said.

“Any—any leads?” Alexis asked.

“Well—”

“Kate,” Castle warned.

Kate shook her head. “Alexis, we, uh, we know who did it. It was pretty obvious.”

“But you’re going to find him, right? You’re going to find him and—and you’re going to get him.”

Kate bit her lip. “Do you remember the serial killer back in September?”

“You mean the—the one—he shot his victims twice in the chest?”

Kate nodded. Castle was strangely quiet.

“But you’re going to find him, aren’t you? I mean, you’ve got more—more evidence. Right, Dad?”

“Alexis, we know who did it,” Castle told her. “Sometimes, that has to be enough.”

Alexis shook her head furiously, tears springing to her eyes. She ran upstairs into the guest room and threw herself down on the side of the bed where Ethan always slept, sobbing into the pillow that smelled faintly of copper and men’s deodorant.


	24. Chapter 24

Parker felt utterly useless. Raines had called her back to the Centre, claiming to have a “special assignment” for her, and a week and a half later, he had yet to tell her anything about her purported assignment. Sydney and Broots were restricted to Blue Cove as well, and Parker wondered how much this had to do with her association with Jarod.

On top of all that, Parker hadn’t seen Raines anywhere in at least three days. Lyle had been in and out, no doubt doing more of Raines’ dirty work, but Parker hadn’t been forced to talk to him. She didn’t want to, not since she found out he’d killed Ethan. Every time she saw him, she had the overwhelming urge to cut him to pieces very, _very_ slowly.

Jarod had called three times since she’d left New York: once after he’d talked to Kate, and twice to update her on his plans. Parker felt utterly useless, stuck in her house or her office every day since she’d been called back. She wanted to leave, but she had to wait as long as possible. She was prepared, just like they’d agreed: bag packed, ready to go no matter what time it was. She’d fly to New York and go to Kate’s, and they’d assess the situation before deciding where to go from there.

That was all in the future, Parker told herself as she stared out her office window. She didn’t know how much longer it would be before Jarod called, and she both dreaded and anticipated it.

Her phone rang. She picked it up. “What?” she demanded, the way she always did.

“Go home,” Jarod said, and then he hung up.

Home? Parker went, but she worried that it was too soon. She rechecked her bag, just in case, and changed into something more suitable for travelling—and possibly running.

A knock came at the door half an hour after she got home and Parker tiptoed downstairs, gun in hand. She looked through the peephole to see Jarod dressed in a pilot’s uniform. She rolled her eyes and opened the door.

“Miss Parker, your chariot awaits,” he said, bowing with a flourish. He straightened, the playfulness gone from his face. “The plan changed. We have to go now.”

Parker collected her bag and locked the door behind her. She tossed the bag in the back seat of the little black car sitting on the street. Jarod drove to the nearby airpark. Neither spoke. A tiny plane sat on the runway. Jarod took Parker’s bag and stowed it in the little cargo compartment on his way to the cockpit. He gestured for her to sit in the co-pilot’s chair and told her not to touch anything. Within half an hour, they were in the air.

“You’d better have a damn good reason for dragging me out of there early,” she said. It was loud in the little plane, but she made herself heard.

“When was the last time you saw Raines?” Jarod asked.

Parker shrugged. “Four, maybe five days ago.”

“He’s been in New York,” Jarod said. “He was at the hotel two nights ago, sniffing around your room, and Kate said he showed up at the precinct yesterday morning.”

“That bastard,” Parker swore.

“I was lucky enough to be able to get off the ground half an hour before he did. He’s probably at your house now.”

Parker scowled. The thought of Raines in her house without her permission _and_ without her presence put her off. She wished she’d had time to booby trap it , or burn it to the ground.

“We can’t go to New York,” he told her.

Parker didn’t like the apologetic tone of his voice. “Then where are we going?”

Jarod didn’t answer.

Parker leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.

Parker fell asleep after about half an hour in the plane, and when Jarod woke her before the descent, she looked out the window to try to figure out where they were. The piece of the world she could see was unblemished white for a long time, until Jarod got closer to the landing strip. There were probably three little private planes in total at the tiny little hangar where they touched down, and judging by the freezing cold and the whiteness of the world, they had to be pretty far north.

“Where the _hell_ are we?” she demanded.

“Lac du Sec, Quebec,” Jarod said. “Population five hundred and ten.”

“ _Canada?_ ”

Jarod nodded. “It’ll take the Centre a lot longer to find us here.”

“We’re in the middle. Of. Nowhere.”

“That’s the idea,” Jarod said in his irritating matter-of-fact tone. He unstrapped himself and pulled a pair of large parkas from behind the seat, handing one to Parker. “You’re going to need this,” he said, shrugging his on.

Parker put on the coat and zipped it up to her chin. A pair of thick gloves were strapped to the sleeves of the coat, and Parker tugged them on. Jarod got out, ran around the plane, and opened the door for her. A blast of freezing cold air hit Parker square in the face. She threw up her faux fur-lined hood against the wind. “We’re going to go into town first,” Jarod said. “There’s a few things you’ll need before we go up to the cabin.” He handed Parker her bag. “There’s a small lobby in the hangar. Wait there for me; I have to put the plane away.”

Parker shouldered her bag and walked to the hangar, fully aware that what she’d packed was going to be inadequate for whatever kind of god-awful weather they had up here in French Nowhere, Canada.

It only took Jarod ten minutes to get the plane put away in the hangar. He came into the lobby with a small duffel bag slung across his back. “The light’s not going to last long enough for us to get up to the cabin. We’ll have to stay in town tonight.”

Parker was past the point of caring; nothing was going to be worse than being forced to hide out in some tiny backwoods snow town in a country where most people spoke a dialect of French Parker could barely understand. Jarod led her out to a little shed where he’d stored a snowmobile. It would seat two, but there was no discernible division between the two seats.

“It’s only a mile to town,” Jarod said, “but it’s going to be cold.” He handed her a pair of ski goggles in exchange for her bag, and she strapped them on, then cinched her hood tighter. She wasn’t driving; she could concentrate on not freezing to death.

Jarod got on the snowmobile and Parker got on behind him. He turned around and looked at her expectantly, but she just gave him the eyebrow. He shrugged and started the engine. It turned over twice before it caught, and then they were off. The snowmobile shot off like a rocket, and Parker had to throw her arms around Jarod’s waist to keep from flying off the back.

The ride into town took less than ten minutes, but by the time she got off the snowmobile at a tiny bed and breakfast, Parker was half-frozen. By the time the owner showed them up to a tiny room on the second floor, it was pitch dark outside.

“We’ll go to the store tomorrow before we go up to the cabin. It’s a bit longer drive there, and it’s going to be cold.”

Parker got the feeling that ‘a bit’ was going to turn out to be a vast understatement. 

* * *

 

After an hour of snowmobiling through trees and around frozen ponds the next day, Jarod pulled up to a little cottage at the top of a hill in the middle of an extra-dense bunch of trees. It looked draughty and cold, but Jarod assured her the place had plenty of heat from the wood-stove and was well-insulated. “Mr. Youlden was nice enough to come start the stove for us. He lives a few miles away.”

“A few _miles_?”

“Like you said, Miss Parker, we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

Parker pinched the bridge of her nose. She’d just run away from the Centre, and now she was going to have to stay out here, in the middle of nowhere, _with Jarod_. She wondered if Mr. Youlden had any cigarettes.

“You have _got_ to be kidding me,” she muttered.

Jarod carried her bag in for her. The cottage had two rooms, plus the bathroom. The front room consisted of a kitchenette, a refrigerator—which meant electricity—a tiny table, and a sofa. The bedroom was fairly small and furnished with a pair of twin beds. A folding screen stood between the beds as a makeshift wall. The bathroom was barely big enough for one person, but Jarod claimed that the water _did_ run hot.

“I renovated it a couple of years ago when I was up here,” Jarod said after Parker gave him a look of ultimate skepticism. “Centre funds, of course.”

Parker didn’t feel a whole lot more confident about the place. “So what am I supposed to do? Sit around and knit?”

Jarod got a couple of glasses out of the cupboard. “There’s a library in town. I can get books there. You could go outside, but it’s usually very cold, and I don’t recommend being outside after it starts getting dark. Drink?”

Parker glared at him, and he filled up a glass from the tap. 

“Well water with a built-in filter,” he explained, handing her the glass. She eyed it suspiciously, but it looked cleaner than any water she’d ever get in New York, so she tried it. It was actually pretty good, for water, and it was ice-cold. “There’s a DVD player in the bedroom, and a bookshelf with DVDs and books. If you want something else, I can get it when I go to town day after tomorrow.”

Parker downed the glass of water and set it next to the sink. “How long do I have to be here?” she asked.

Jarod set his glass down gently. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

Parker glared at him for a moment, then turned and went to the bedroom, unfolding the last panel of the screen to completely close her side off from the rest of the room. She tossed her bag on the floor—she could unpack later, or tomorrow—and dove under the covers.

This was going to be the worst rescue ever.

* * *

 

If Parker had had her gun, she would have shot Jarod a long time ago. As it was, she’d left her gun behind—and even if she hadn’t left it, Jarod probably would have nicked it from her when she wasn’t looking and hidden it in the woods.

Thankfully, he’d gone into town for one more run before he spent three days in New York, leaving her alone in the cabin. They’d just spent three days snowed in before he could dig his way out the door and over to the shed. Parker spent almost the entire three days in her half of the bedroom, reading and watching DVDs. She’d tried going out to the kitchen to cook, but Jarod always beat her to it. It was so irritating how _nice_ he was when _he_ was the one who’d chosen this godforsaken patch of frozen nowhere. He seemed to be trying to make up for stranding her here, not realising that he was _never_ going to do it. Parker wished he would stop trying so this would feel more like prison and less like hell.

He came back from his trip into town shortly before dark—he’d been gone for six of the eight daylight hours—with a stack of new books, food, and a few other necessities. Parker took the books and cracked one open, eager for something to do besides go utterly stir-crazy. An hour later, Jarod knocked on the partition.

“What?” she barked, engrossed in her book.

“Dinner’s done,” he said, as nicely as if she _hadn’t_ been snapping at him continually for the past three weeks.

She’d tried to convince him again and again she could get her own food, but he seemed to revel in the opportunity to torture her with his niceness. He’d even gone so far as to leave a lunch for her in the refrigerator that morning with reheating instructions.

Parker got up and opened the screen panel that served for the door. Jarod was holding a plate with a sandwich. “Why are you so damn nice all the time?” she asked.

“If you don’t want it,” Jarod said, “I can make something else.”

Parker pinched the bridge of her nose. “ _Why_?” she repeated.

Jarod shrugged. “It’s easier to cook for two than to cook for one.”

Parker eyed the sandwich suspiciously. Making two sandwiches was decidedly _more_ work than making only one, but it was clear that Jarod wasn’t going to tell her his actual motives. She took the plate and Jarod left. Parker sat on her bed with her book and set the plate on the bedside table, occasionally giving  the sandwich an accusing glare.


	25. Chapter 25

Jarod parked the snowmobile in the shed and trekked up to the cabin. It was nearly dark, but all the lights were off. Was she sleeping? He unlocked the door and shouldered his way in, lugging his bag behind him. “Miss Parker?” he called. No answer. He flicked the light on and walked back to the bedroom. The screen was up, and there was no sign that she would even be gone. He knocked on the last panel of the screen. When she didn’t answer, he pulled it open, but her bed was neatly made. She was gone.

“Looking for something?” asked a voice.

Jarod jumped, whirling. She stood with her hands on her hips, dressed in her snow gear. “You’re still here,” he said stupidly.

“Yes,” she sneered. “No thanks to _you_. What are you doing in here?”

“Looking for you. I got back and you weren’t here—”

Parker rolled her eyes. “I went for a walk. If I’d known you were going to send a search party, I would have been back earlier.”

“No note?”

“If I had _known_ you were going to come back, I would have left one,” she said irritably. “Now get out of my room.”

Jarod nodded and ducked past her to unpack. He would have said he’d overreacted, but she hadn’t left a note. He started a load of laundry and went out to the kitchen to make some food. The pantry and the refrigerator were pretty bare. He’d have to go into town tomorrow and do some grocery shopping. Parker probably needed more books anyway. He’d gotten her an e-reader while he was in New York a few trips back, when it was obvious she would read the entire fiction section of the library within the next couple of weeks, but he was waiting until she ran out of books before he gave it to her.

Jarod dug through the food, trying to determine what he could make from what was left. He’d gotten a few recipes from friends in New York, but they were missing half the ingredients for it, so Jarod settled for making sandwiches with potato fries. He loaded both plates and left his own on the table. He was about to take Parker’s plate to her when she walked out into the kitchen.

“Dinner’s done,” he said.

“I can see that,” Parker said. She took the plate from him and sat in the other chair.

Jarod looked questioningly at her. She’d never eaten in the kitchen when he was home.

“Sit,” she commanded.

Jarod sat in his chair and picked up a couple of fries. “You’re eating in the kitchen.”

Parker arched an eyebrow. “You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes,” she drawled.

“Why?”

“Because,” she said, “you might be my least favorite human on earth, but you’re the first one I’ve seen in almost a week.”

Jarod had been hiding his astonishment rather well, or so he thought.

“Don’t look so surprised. It’s _your_ fault.”

Jarod hung his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But if they found you—”

“I’ve been out here for weeks,” Parker snarled. “The closest I’ve come to seeing people other than _you_ is on TV, and that’s getting old.”

But he _couldn’t_ let them find her. They would kill her, and then where would he be? But maybe, if they were careful and she didn’t make any impressions, she could go into town with him. “Okay,” he said. Her surprise was a little amusing. “I could use some help with the shopping anyway, and you probably want to pick your own books for a change.”

“About time,” she said. She seemed sullen, but Jarod could understand her lack of enthusiasm. It was a break from what felt to her like captivity, but she’d have to come back up to the cabin. Jarod just wished there was another solution.

“We’ll leave just after sun-up,” Jarod said.

“Fine,” Parker replied shortly. She clearly didn’t want to talk.

Jarod went back to his sandwich and, when he was done, he took his plate and Parker’s to the sink. He’d decided against a dishwasher during the cabin’s renovations, so he’d have to wash them by hand. He’d just picked up the sponge when Parker took the plate from his hand and elbowed him out of the way.

Jarod dropped the sponge into the sink. “You could _say_ something,” he said as nicely as he could manage. He understood her frustration, and he usually had a lot of patience with her lightning-quick temper, but sometimes it was just over the edge.

“Fine,” Parker said, scrubbing viciously at the plate with the sponge. “Move.”

“I’ll dry?” Jarod offered.

“No,” Parker said flatly. “Go make some plans or fold some birds. Just stay out of the way.”

Jarod backed away and went to his room. He’d seen her in a wide variety of bad tempers, but this was something new, something he wasn’t familiar with. He took out a notebook—this one black instead of his usual red—and thumbed through it. At the end was a list of questions that still hadn’t been answered. He added three more questions and frowned at how long the list was. He might have asked a few of them, if he knew how to ask her questions that she didn’t interpret as death requests.

Parker had to walk through his side of the room to get to hers. He’d done it as a courtesy to her, so that he need not invade her private space except in extenuating circumstances. He’d never really had the luxury of a private space, having spent nearly his entire life under the watchful gaze of cameras, and he didn’t mind being able to gauge her temper once in a while. She looked less angry when she walked through, but Jarod dared not say anything. She went into the bathroom for a few minutes, and when she walked through to her room, Jarod knew by the particular scowl on her face that she wasn’t planning on leaving her room again until morning.

“Good night,” he said. He made a point to say ‘good morning’ and ‘good night’, even if he said nothing else to her during the course of a day, and even though she would just ignore him.

Tonight, she paused at the panel-door. She didn’t say anything, but the pause was meaningful enough. She hadn’t ignored him. _Full of surprises_ , Jarod thought. Certainly the most complicated Pandora’s box he’d ever tried to open, and he would keep trying until she killed him.

* * *

“Good morning,” Jarod said when Parker walked into the kitchen. Did he have to be so damn cheery? _And_ he was cooking again. He really was trying to make her life hell.

“I don’t know how good it is,” she muttered. She hadn’t slept well, though she’d never tell him and she would certainly never admit why she’d been so restless. She’d slept badly for the past week, waking constantly with the overwhelming feeling that someone was going to come up to the middle of nowhere and haul her back to the Centre. In between waking, she had nightmares—not just about going back, but about her mother’s death, the cemetery on Carthis, and the terrors of her childhood and her adolescence and her adulthood.

Jarod turned an omelette onto a plate and poured more raw egg into the pan. “I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I thought you’d like having the cabin to yourself.”

Parker glared. She wasn’t against having the cabin to herself—she liked when he was gone for a day or two—but being alone, especially at night, for days on end was miserable. She wasn’t going to pretend she missed _him_ —she would have preferred the company of Kate Beckett, who would at least be likely to see sense and split duties like cooking and washing up and laundry—but having another human around made it a bit easier to sleep.

“Maybe you should go into town by yourself,” she snapped. “Since I shouldn’t leave the cabin anyway.”

Jarod stopped pushing half-cooked eggs around the pan. “You shouldn’t leave the cabin because there’s a chance word of your whereabouts will get back to the Centre, but you _should_ leave the cabin because  you’re going to go stir crazy if you don’t.”

Stir crazy? She was stir crazy after the first week. This was different. “I’m not a _dog_ , Jarod. You don’t have to walk me every day like a mutt.” He could bring her damn food and she’d eat _alone_ if he was going to be a moron. She turned and walked away.

“No,” he said when she’d reached edge of the room. She stopped. “This isn’t going to work like this.”

Parker was fed up with his cryptic talk. “If you’ve got something to say, spit it out. Otherwise, I’m going to go chew on a bone.”

Jarod flipped the omelette over in the pan. “Do you want to go into town?”

Parker almost preferred the cryptograms over idiotic questions. “ _Yes_ ,” she snarled. She wanted to get out of the cabin for more than twenty minutes.

“Okay. It’s up to you,” he said. “Come if you want.” The way he said it made it plain that he wanted her to come along.

“Fine,” she said. She’d go, because she hadn’t left the cabin, save for a couple of short walks, but that didn’t mean she was looking forward to spending an entire day following him around.

* * *

Parker wasn’t surprised to see that the town library was smaller than her house in Blue Cove. Jarod had mentioned once before that she was going to read the library out of books. She’d thought he was joking. The fiction section was by far the largest in the library, but a lot of those were classics, which she’d read most of in her years at boarding school, or books she’d already read. The handful of books she hadn’t read were obscure, or their summaries completely uninteresting.

“Find anything?” Jarod asked. He was carrying a couple of biographies and half a dozen children’s books.

“I didn’t realise you were serious,” she said, realising she was going to have to start reading something else. Biographies. Children’s books.

Jarod smirked the way he did when he had something planned. Parker rolled her eyes. “What is it this time?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. She followed him up to the front desk. The old librarian put down her knitting and smiled at Jarod. “Can I help you?” she asked in thickly-accented English.

“Yes. I think I’ve got a book on reserve,” Jarod answered in flawless Québecois.

The librarian winked at him, then glanced at Parker. “ _Ouais_.” She pulled out a large book that was obviously much newer than it was made to look.

Jarod handed it to Parker with a mischievous smirk. She eyed it suspiciously, but took it when he pushed it at her. It was much lighter than it should have been. She opened the front cover to find a hollow inside. Resting in the book-box and padded with tissue paper was an e-reader.

Parker looked up at Jarod, her lips tight. “Did you finally get tired of carrying my books?” she asked.

Jarod shrugged. “You should be able to order books from the cabin,” he said. He thanked the librarian, and she went back to her knitting as they left. They’d already been to the grocery store—the library had been a quick stop on the way out of town—so Jarod packed the e-reader and its book-box in with the groceries.

Parker looked around the town again, pulling her coat tighter against the cold. There had been people in the town and, even though Jarod had done most of the talking in his perfect Canadian French, Parker had enjoyed the brief company of real people.

“We can stay a little longer if you want,” Jarod said quietly, coming to stand next to her, “but we need to make it back before dark.”

Parker shook her head, glaring at the snow. “Let’s just go.”


	26. Chapter 26

Jarod knocked gingerly on the divider.

“What?” Parker said boredly. She sounded like she was deeply engrossed in a book and wanted nothing more than to be left alone to read. Jarod had barely seen her since he’d given her the e-reader, and he might have waited to tell her he was going, but there was no guarantee he’d see her before he had to leave. Breakfast and mornings weren’t exactly her favourite things to do.

He _really_ didn’t want to say it. “I’m going to the city in the morning.”

There was a long pause, then: “Fine.”

Jarod sighed. There wasn’t any way for him to make it better, except to spend the barest amount of time possible away from the cabin. Maybe he could get away with just two days—one in New York and one in Delaware—instead of spending an extra day in New York. If he could, he might be able to spend a whole week at the cabin.

“I’ll only be gone a couple of days.”

Another pause, this one shorter. “Fine.”

He’d come back late this morning, having flown in as early as he could manage it, and she’d been annoyed as usual both at his absence and at his return. He’d made lunch, and she’d taken it to her room. He wondered if she’d eat with him, or if she’d hide in her room for the entire night.

She came out to eat with him, and he took the chance to explain the small change in plans.

Parker didn’t react.

“I’ll be in New York for most of tomorrow, then Delaware the day after. I’ll be back on Thursday.”

“Fine,” was all she said.

Jarod took her plate when she was done, and she vanished back into her room. He washed, dried, and put away the dishes and went to unpack, repack, and maybe read a book before trying to sleep.

* * *

 

Jarod had witnessed some of Parker’s nightmares in the past, but they’d always been brought on by something: a thunderstorm, Ethan’s murder. This one didn’t have an easily-discernible source. Nonetheless, Jarod dutifully got up and went into Parker’s room. He crouched next to the bed and shook her gently until she woke. She stopped yelling, but she looked terrified. A few seconds later, she realised what had happened and her usual scowling, steel-plated mask slid into place.

“Nightmares?” Jarod asked. She looked at him like he was an idiot. He stood up and went back to his room.

An hour later, the nightmares returned. Jarod got up again and went into her room. He crouched next to the bed again and shook her awake. She seized his shirt and clung to him in her half-awakeness. He sat on his knees to keep from overbalancing and did his best to calm her. He murmured her name gently—her first name, her secret name—and held her until she rose out of her half-awake daze and let go of his shirt. She turned away, but he didn’t leave. After a long pause, she turned back to him. She reached a hand out and pressed her fingers into his chest. She seemed relieved that he was actually there—had she dreamt _he_ was gone?

New York suddenly seemed like a bad idea.

“I don’t have to go in the morning,” he said. “I can stay here.”

“Fine,” she said sharply. She laid back down and pulled the covers in around her.

Jarod still didn’t leave.

“What do you want, Jarod?” Parker snapped wearily.

“I want to help,” he said. _And you won’t let me_ , he added silently.

“I don’t want your _help_.”

“I know you don’t want to be up here in this cabin, and I know you don’t want _me_ for company, but I _have_ to keep you safe.” He couldn’t—he’d lost every single member of his family, and he wasn’t about to lose the only other person that mattered to him.

“Because of your _plan_ ,” she sneered.

Jarod shook his head. “No.” How did he put it to her in a way that wouldn’t make her strangle him? “Do you remember the first Christmas present you ever gave me?” It was also the _only_ Christmas present she ever gave him.

Parker gave him a ‘don’t be stupid’ look. “Yes.”

“I’ve been looking for the little girl who gave it to me, and you’re the only one who can find her,” he said.

A long pause followed. Parker couldn’t hold Jarod’s gaze. “I don’t know where she is,” she said. “I’m not sure she’s there any more.”

“She is,” Jarod said. “Somewhere.” She had to be there, or Parker wouldn’t have such horrible nightmares. Somewhere in there was a terrified little girl—the same little girl who had given him his first kiss almost twenty-eight years ago.

* * *

When Parker woke the next morning and went out to find something for breakfast, Jarod was already there, frying hash browns and eggs in the rising sun. With only six hours of sunlight a day, dawn came much later at the cabin than it had in Delaware. It was already late morning, and Parker was surprised that Jarod was still there.

“I thought you were going to New York,” she said, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

“Not today,” he said, tossing a pinch of salt onto the eggs.

Parker went to sit at the table. “If this is about the nightmares—”

“No,” Jarod said. “I’m not going to New York today. I’ll go tomorrow.”

“What happened to your change of plans?”

Jarod shrugged. “They changed again.” He shut off the pan of eggs and deftly switched topics. “How are you liking your new library?” He sounded like he was proud of himself for thinking of it.

“Do you want a round of applause?” she snapped. “Yes, it’s fine,” she amended. She hadn’t meant to sound ungrateful, but even a library at her fingertips wasn’t going to make up for her captivity.

Jarod’s smile vanished. “Good,” he said, turning back to the potatoes. He turned off the pan, dished out both plates, and set them on the table.

The silence was even less comfortable than usual. Jarod was stiff, and Parker realised that maybe he _didn’t_ have infinite patience for her. He was still the most irritating human being to breathe air, but he happened to be the only human being she’d have the opportunity to interact with in the near future. And there was apparently a rather significant part of her that didn’t want to lose him, because a large portion of her nightmares now featured him dying in one horrific way or another, and all at her hand.

He’d told her what Kate had said about Ethan’s murder, that Lyle had shot him four times and left him to bleed out in a warehouse where it was probably freezing. Parker knew Lyle well enough to guess that he hadn’t just shot Ethan four times in quick succession; it had most likely been a long, drawn-out affair with lots of talking on Lyle’s part.

And her nightmares were getting successively worse. Ever since Carthis, she’d had the occasional bad dream about the cemetery or of her father falling out of the plane or, even more occasionally, of watching her mother shot to death in the elevator. Within the last three or four months, those nightmares had increased in frequency and, most recently, in intensity. She had to force herself to sleep every night even though she knew there would be at least one nightmare to suffer through, and she’d only get at most four hours of poor-quality sleep. The worst part, she thought, was that she could no longer call Jarod on the nights when trying was useless. Whether he was in New York or at the cabin, her nightmares were all the same.

She dreaded the day she woke and couldn’t shake off the nightmare.


	27. Chapter 27

He wondered what the origami bird on her desk meant. It had appeared there a few weeks ago, on the edge of her pen cup, and she only took notice of it the first time she saw it. After that, it sat next to her pens as if it had always belonged there. He wanted to ask about it, but every time he tried, his efforts were foiled by one interruption or another.

He remembered the bird today, even though they were driving to talk to family of the victim, because he’d been thinking idly about hawks and falcons. “What’s the bird on your desk for?” he asked her abruptly.

“What bird?”

“The origami thing next to your pens.”

“Oh, that? An anonymous thank-you note.”

Castle arched an eyebrow. “You get anonymous thank-you notes folded up into—what is that, a hawk?”

“It’s supposed to be Onisius,” she said. “The Greek god of retribution.” She laughed.

He wasn’t up to scratch on his Greek mythology, but he couldn’t recall the name. “Is it funny?”

Kate shrugged. “Onisius isn’t a Greek god,” she explained.

Castle wondered just how anonymous the note really was. Kate was hiding something; even if he had no clue what that something was, she couldn’t hide the fact that she there was something she wasn’t telling him.

* * *

It was a dangerous idea, giving Castle a copy of Jarod’s somewhat-stylized autobiography. The book was being published as fiction, a mix of sci-fi and dystopia, but Kate had read it and it felt both uncomfortably real and comfortably fictional at the same time.

He seemed intrigued by the idea, but she didn’t expect him to devour it overnight and come to her the next morning asking question after question about her thoughts on the book. She was careful in her answers, deliberately refusing to give any indication that she knew it wasn’t entirely fiction. She preferred to listen to his analysis of the story, and was surprised that, while he knew it couldn’t be true, he thought it _felt_ plausible. Jarod had intended the story to feel plausible. He’d wanted everyone who read it to doubt its fictionality, so that when the time came to reveal the truth of it, it would come as a shock, but it would be well-received.

Jarod updated Kate periodically on the book’s statistics. Its release was unpublicized and unannounced, but it appeared on bookstore shelves anyway. Its readership was small, but copies of the book passed from hand to hand, following the plea of the emperiled main character. Unique to this book was the absence of summaries, reviews, and ‘filler’ material. It had a plain cover, a title page, a short dedication ( _To my Nemesis_ ), and five hundred pages of gut-wrenching, heart-racing ‘fiction’. There were no blank pages, except for the very last page of the book, which was printed with origami fold markings and was meant to be torn out and folded into the image of Onisius. Kate had torn hers out before giving her copy to Castle.

She did not expect Castle to adore the book as much as he did. He came to the precinct after returning her copy with a grin on his face, proudly showing off his own copy. He said he’d bought it because he never would have given Kate’s back otherwise. Kate snuck a look in the back of it later, when Castle was busy concocting elaborate theories about the current case. The final page was missing.

* * *

Kate spent as much extra time with her trainer as she could possibly manage. She’d looked over the blueprints and the plans, and she was going to have to be in top shape if she was going to make it through intact.

“Kate, girl, you gonna wear me out,” said Quentin.

“Again,” she said breathlessly. “One more.”

“You said that three rounds ago.” Quentin raised his gloves. “But if you say so.”

Kate raised her fists, bouncing on the balls of her feet, trying to stay as light as possible. She didn’t care about landing any punches; she was more concerned with keeping herself alive, so to speak. Quentin knew it, and he took the offensive, throwing more jabs and going for more tackles. Kate dodged and wove and occasionally gave him a tap on the ribs or a swipe near his feet. She eventually got him down after he threw a wide punch and Kate took his legs out from under him.

“Nicely done,” he said. “Why the sudden enthusiasm?”

“Challenge,” she said.

“Your boyfriend?”

Kate grinned and rolled her eyes. She hadn’t said anything about why she spent so much time at the gym, but Quentin had gotten the idea into his head that she was in some kind of fitness competition with her boyfriend, as if Richard Castle ever did any _real_ exercise.

Castle had expressed concern about her well-being so many times that she’d decided it was probably better to cave to his pleas. They were going to dinner tonight, and he’d let slip something about a surprise back at the loft. Kate checked the clock and decided she had time for a few laps in the pool. She didn’t have a suit with her, so she stripped off her gloves and dove in in her sports bra and spandex shorts. She managed to swim three hundred meters before she figured it was time to hit the shower. She rinsed off, dried her hair a bit under the hand dryer, and threw on jeans, a t-shirt, and her coat and scarf. She put her wet stuff in a plastic bag and hoisted the whole thing over her shoulder.

Castle was waiting for her in the lobby. “Have a good workout?” he asked.

Kate grinned. “You know, you and I should work out together,” she said. 

“Mm… you mean at the gym?” he jibed, giving her a sly grin.

Kate rolled her eyes. They both knew it would never happen. Castle took her bag from her and tossed it in the back seat of the car. He refused to hand over the keys, even though they both knew Kate was a better driver by necessity. She sat in the passenger seat while Castle shot her sultry looks and didn’t look at the road nearly enough for Kate’s comfort.

Kate’s phone buzzed as she dropped her bag next to the door of the loft. Castle heard the phone vibrate and turned around. Jarod’s message was so short, she didn’t even need to unlock her phone: _Tonight_.

All the giddiness she’d been feeling from the workout endorphins vanished.

“Kate?”

She pulled herself back to Now. “Yeah?”

“What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, trying to sound neither guilty nor falsely innocent.

Castle picked up a small paper Onisius from the coffee table in the living room. Kate could see the lines and text of the folding instructions “Who wrote that book?”

Kate searched for words, but they evaded her like guilty suspects.

“You have one of these on your desk.”

“It’s just an origami bird, Castle,” she said. “You’re reading way too much into this.”

“Am I?” he asked. His face was showing the beginning stages of anger, but Kate couldn’t tell him. Not now; there wasn’t time. “Something’s going on. I can _see_ it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not good.”

“Justice,” she said firmly. “I’m just doing my job.”

“Your _job_? What part of your job has you speaking Russian over the phone and sneaking off to secret meetings?”

“Castle…”

“Damn it, Kate!”

“Let’s just forget about it for now, okay?” she pleaded. She wanted to spend the evening with him to take her mind off of what sure to be an intense night.

He must have heard something in her tone, or seen something in her eyes, because his stance shifted dramatically. “Okay, now you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Really.”

“No.” He threw the Onisius to the floor. “Tell me what’s going on.”

She saw the determination in his eyes. He wasn’t going to give up on this for a single moment. She had no choice.

“Let me eat something,” she compromised. “Dinner, and then—” She took a deep breath. “Then I’ll talk.”


	28. Chapter 28

Jarod would be at the door any minute. Kate had everything she’d need, all packed up in a duffel bag by the door. They’d gone to her apartment at her request—insistence, really—and picked up takeout on the way. 

“I’ll be back by noon,” she promised, her words muffled by Castle’s shirt. It had taken an extraordinarily long time for her to pack the small duffel, what with Castle’s constant hovering and their seemingly overwhelming need to touch each other and hold each other. Now that she was finally packed, Castle was stretched out on the sofa, and Kate lay half on top of him, half against the back of the couch, clinging to him as long as she could before Jarod arrived.

“You better come back,” he said, kissing her hair.

“Did it twice before,” she said.

“You better come back whole and intact and _not_ shot, okay?” he amended. “I want to be able to hold you in my arms and lay in bed with you when you come back and I want it to be in _my_ bed and _not_ a hospital bed.”

Kate knew how it would go when she got back. “I _know_ what you have in mind, Richard Castle, and it would be rather difficult to do if I ended up in a hospital bed.” She kissed his jaw. “So I won’t.”

“Good,” Castle said. The rap-tap-tap of Jarod’s sharp knock sounded against the door. Castle squeezed Kate tighter for a fraction of a second before letting her get up and answer the door.

Jarod stepped inside and the door swung most of the way shut behind him. Kate picked up her duffel bag and tugged on her shoes. Jarod seemed surprised to see someone else in the apartment, but a short nonverbal exchange with Kate pacified him momentarily. Castle padded over, giving Jarod a nod. Kate reached up on tiptoe to kiss him briefly. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she told him. She moved out of his reach before he could draw out their goodbye any longer. Castle opened the door and saluted Jarod and Kate on their way out. He’d agreed to wait for her at her apartment; she would call when she needed to be picked up.

“He loves you, doesn’t he?” Jarod asked, as if he’d made a scientific discovery and needed to confirm his findings.

Kate nodded, blushing a little. “Yeah. I kinda like him, too,” she joked.

Jarod didn’t say anything, but Kate was pretty familiar with the look on his face. “How’s… your nemesis?” she asked as they stepped out onto the street.

“I don’t think she sleeps much,” he said. “I had to wake her out of a nightmare a few nights ago. I think she has them more often than she admits.” Jarod unlocked the car and Kate tossed her bag in the back seat. He shook his head. “She hates it there. I wish I could have taken her somewhere else, but it’s the only safe place I know.”

“It’s not for much longer,” Kate said.

Jarod pulled out into traffic. They were silent for a few blocks. After this mission, everything would start falling into place like a hundred thousand dominoes. They sat at a red light and Jarod launched into a rehash of their plan. Kate nodded along, adding in her parts when necessary so they made sure they were still on the same page for this mission. Tonight was the crucial step, the cornerstone of Jarod’s master plan. They had one shot. If they failed, there was nowhere on earth they’d be safe. Kate, Parker, and Jarod—and now Castle—all knew it, but she was past the point of nervousness. The stakes just made her that much more determined to win.

The plane trip to the tiny airpark just outside Blue Cove was silent save for the noise of the plane’s engine. Kate was focused on running the mission over and over in her mind, and she suspected that, if Jarod wasn’t doing the same, he was probably concentrating on flying the plane.

The hardest part, Kate knew, would be getting past the first five sublevels of the building. After the fifth sublevel, security was sparse at best. Jarod had plotted a route to a series of ventilation shafts between the eleventh and twelfth sublevels, where they would crawl to the central data station. There were some switches on a huge wall that Kate would have to find and flip while Jarod did some quick computer magic, and then they would crawl to a different exit point and make their way back out of the building, to the plane, and fly back to New York shortly after dawn.

When they landed, a pilot—with whom Jarod was apparently good friends—taxied the plane to the fuelling station and Jarod and Kate got in a little beater car that was idling on the runway. Jarod drove to the beach, where Kate tugged on her wetsuit over her skin-tight track suit. The wetsuit wasn’t as snug as it had been when she’d first gotten it and she allowed herself a smug smile. Jarod stripped off his jacket and pants to reveal his own wetsuit, already on and ready to go. Kate let him zip the back of her suit up and she tucked her braid into the hood, hoping it would stay mostly dry. They’d lose a lot of valuable time if Kate had to sit and squeeze water out of her hair. She gave Jarod a thumbs-up and they got into the water. Jarod had a small, watertight bag strapped to his back with their shoes and the few tools they’d need to do the mission, and Kate swam behind him around an outcropping of rock. Even with her wetsuit, the water was cold, and the five hundred meters felt more like five thousand. They got out behind a little trailer, and Kate peeked around it at the enormous building of the Centre.

Kate stripped off her wetsuit, pleased to find that her hair was pretty much dry. She and Jarod pulled on socks and thin sneakers that reminded Kate of thick-soled jazz shoes. Despite all the light emanating from the building, security at the Centre was relatively easy to bypass if you knew where to run and where to duck. Kate followed Jarod, and they ran, crawled, and ducked their way to a side door. Jarod scanned a security pass on the door, and let both of them into a small, poorly-lit hallway. Another door led into a sort of locker room for the security guards, where Jarod opened a trap door and they climbed down a ladder to the next level.

Their next door was across an infrared tripwire. Jarod took out a green pocket laser and pointed to the receiver, which was about a foot above the ground. He held the laser and Kate edged along the wall, stepping over the invisible trap. Jarod did the same without the aid of the laser, and slipped the laser back into his pocket. The door opened onto a stairwell which spiralled down to the ninth sublevel, but because of where they needed to go, and because of a few traps that weren’t so easy to avoid, they’d only be able to take it down to the fourth level.

Jarod pressed his ear to the ground at the fourth-level landing. He waited half a minute and then gave Kate a signal. She picked the lock and the door swung open. They avoided another infrared tripwire and ducked down a trap door ladder. Kate heard the security guard walk over their heads half a minute later, and stop on top of the trap door. She and Jarod hurried down the ladder as fast as they could without making noise. They were hidden when the trapdoor opened and the security guard called to them.

“Hello?” he asked. “Who’s there?”

Kate rolled her eyes for Jarod as if to say, “It’s like he thinks we’re going to _tell_ him we’re breaking in. ” Jarod smirked. The trap door clanged shut and Kate followed Jarod through a low passageway to the most dangerous section of their mission: getting to Sublevel Six.


	29. Chapter 29

There were medical labs on Sublevel Five, and because every single person in the Centre was trained to recognize Jarod’s face, Kate would be doing most of the legwork. There was a locker room down the hall to the right, and when the hallway was clear, Kate snuck out of her hiding place at the mouth of the passageway and walked down the hall, invisible, until she made it into the locker room. According to Jarod, the Centre was busy twenty-four hours a day, and this wing of Sublevel Five would be just as busy now, in the middle of the night, as it would be in the middle of the day.

She counted twelve lockers down the third row and swung the door open. Inside was a lab coat and an ID card. She slipped the ID in the coat pocket and slid the coat on. She buttoned up a couple of the buttons, took a deep breath to try to calm her racing nerves, and walked out of the locker room.

The hallways were mostly bare; anyone working would be in a lab or an exam room. As she walked through the hall, she looked in the windows of the rooms she was passing. The first set of windows looked in on small offices with technicians hunched over machines and computers. After the offices came a series of testing facilities, with big imaging machines and scanners, and then exam rooms. Many of the rooms were empty, but there were a few with patients. Some of the patients wore lab coats themselves, and one patient was a girl of no more than six with dark brown hair, dressed in a grey jumpsuit. As Kate passed, the girl looked to the physician.

Kate blinked and shook her head. She _had_ to have been hallucinating. She hadn’t gotten any sleep in the car or on the plane, and if it weren’t for the adrenaline, she would have been asleep on her feet. But the girl’s eyes  were the exact same shade as Kate’s, and she _looked_ like she could have been Kate’s sister.

It was probably just a coincidence, Kate told herself as she found a gurney in an empty exam room. She looked up and down the hall before she took the gurney out, hoping to make it back to the passageway without any questions. Nobody noticed her on the way back, or if they did, they didn’t think anything of her. When she got back to the passageway, she picked the sheet up and Jarod expertly climbed onto the gurney. Kate settled the sheet over him and was impressed at his ability to play dead.

The elevator wasn’t far, but they would have to pass a few offices, and while Jarod had told her that loaded gurneys weren’t uncommon, Kate was still nervous about this part. The gurney rolled surprisingly easily, even with Jarod on top of it, and Kate wheeled him down the hallway to the elevator. Another lab tech walked in and gave her a sympathetic look, but he didn’t ask questions. Kate pushed the button for Sublevel Seven—the level for the morgue—and the other tech pushed the button for Sublevel Six.

No one got on the elevator at Sublevel Six, to Kate’s relief, but a group of people were waiting to get on the elevator when she got off. She kept her head down, avoiding the gaze of the wheezing bald man with the oxygen tank. He stared at her as she walked away, and she forced herself to keep her pace steady even as she expected him to stop her. She heard the doors slide shut a few seconds later and shivered with relief as she turned down a dimly-lit hallway and into a deserted room.

The second she closed the door, Jarod sprang out from under the sheet. He nodded to Kate. “Well done,” he whispered, smiling his winning smile. She shucked her lab coat and they snuck out of the room and down the hall to another maintenance shaft. They paused there for a moment and Kate breathed deeply, trying to calm her nerves.

* * *

Kate crouched at the beginning of the ventilator shaft. It was pitch dark in the space between Sublevels Eleven and Twelve, and they would have to rely on the map in Jarod’s mind to get them across the central part of the Tower and into the data room.

Kate wished they’d done this during the summer, when the air blowing through the ventilator shafts wasn’t heated. She was sweating by the time they made their third turn, and she could feel her shirt sticking to her back. She’d known it would be warm, but this was just gross.

When Jarod finally stopped, Kate nearly ran into him, occupied as she was with thinking about anything but the sticky, sweaty heat. He crawled over the grill, then carefully unscrewed it and pushed it to the side. Kate went first, and the opening was so small, she was amazed Jarod ever got through. She dropped to the floor with as little noise as possible, and moved off to start her work. She barely heard Jarod drop down behind her, and she was surprised he’d gotten through. She searched the panels for the switches she was supposed to flip. It took a fair amount of searching, but she discovered a pattern in the labels, making finding the switches much easier. She flipped them, and each one made a loud _snap_.

Jarod’s fingers flew over a console keyboard, diving straight past any firewalls into the Centre’s databases. He’d said he was going to plant a virus, one that would cause all kinds of leaks and that was designed to mutate whenever the Centre’s IT techs tried to block it.

When he was finished, Jarod took a small, folded piece of paper and, tugging on a few corners with his fingers, set a miniature bird on top of the keyboard. He turned to Kate. _Ready?_ his smirk asked. Kate nodded.

They weren’t going out the way they’d come in. Part of Jarod’s database-hacking had involved a quick but temporary confusion of the security system that would allow Kate and Jarod to get out by a path that was less complicated than their entry route.

Kate eased the door of the data room open and scanned the hallway: empty. She and Jarod slipped out quietly, and Kate followed him through the maze of corridors to a maintenance shaft that took them to the sixth level. They waited for the security guard to walk by, and then Jarod got the door to the stairs open. They jogged up four flights of stairs, and were nearly free when a pair of Sweepers met them coming down. They kept their faces down, hoping they wouldn’t be noticed.

“You never see people on these stairs,” one of the Sweepers muttered to his companion as they descended.

“Well, we’re on the—wait, is that—”

Kate didn’t hear the rest of the second Sweeper’s comment. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears as she sprinted up the last flight of stairs. Jarod was just behind her, and the Sweepers, lacking the fatigue of four flights of stairs, were gaining on them.

“That door!” Jarod said. “That one. Go!” Kate threw the door open and sprinted out, retracing the path she and Jarod had taken in. Two shots rang out, and Kate abandoned the carefully planned path, zig-zagging across the lawn toward the ocean.

She heard a soft thud, and then the erratic beat of Jarod stumbling down the grass behind her. “Jarod?”

“Just go! I’m right behind you!” he shouted breathlessly.

Kate went around an outcropping, ducking out of sight and sneaking into the abandoned trailer. Jarod stumbled in after her, breathing heavily.

“Out of shape?” she asked, tugging on her wetsuit as quickly as possible. It was still wet and Kate got stuck more than once. She helped Jarod into his own wetsuit—he was having more trouble than Kate would have expected from him—and Jarod zipped up the back of hers. It was too dark for the Sweepers to have found them without flashlights, but Kate could see a dozen men in suits running down to the oceanside.

“Let’s go,” Jarod said, holding the back door open. Kate followed him into the water and around the cliff, trusting his knowledge of the coast far more than her own.

Jarod let Kate drive this time, not because she was the better driver, but because the Sweepers hadn’t gotten a good look at her face. She stripped out of her wetsuit and threw on the blue sweater Jarod had been wearing earlier. It made her stifling hot, but at least it covered the tight black uniform she’d been seen in. She forced herself to drive just under the speed limit to the airstrip. The pilot who had kept the plane ready told them a second jet was asking the local air traffic control for clearance to leave. “A Centre plane?” Kate asked Jarod.

“Probably,” Jarod said. He thanked the pilot for keeping the plane hot, and within ten minutes, they were in the air, headed away from Delaware. Kate dug through a box in the storage compartment and pulled out some high-energy food. She wasn’t hungry, but she knew she’d need to eat something before the adrenaline wore off. She handed a granola bar and a protein shake to Jarod, sat in the co-pilot’s seat, and put on her headset.

“That went well,” Jarod said.

“Yeah, I’d say, since the alternative was one or both of us captured or dead.”

Jarod shrugged. Kate saw him wince in the dim light from the control panel.

“Jarod, are you okay?”

“Just fine,” he said.

“I heard you fall,” Kate said.

“Oh, that. Just tripped, that’s all.”

“If you say so.” Kate dozed on and off as the darkness out the window turned to dark grey and they flew in to Queens. Jarod had radioed ahead and Kate called Castle, who was on the tarmac when Jarod landed.

As she and Castle drove away, Kate saw a group of men in suits pile out of another plane, but Jarod was already lifting off the runway, headed north.


	30. Chapter 30

Parker didn’t even bother trying to sleep that night. Jarod had flown out on his mission, and, as much as he pissed her off, he was pretty much the only thing standing between her and the Centre. If he was caught, it wouldn’t be long before the Centre found her, and they probably wouldn’t be kind enough to kill her.

So instead of going to sleep only to wake up hoarse and unrested from her nightmares, Parker stayed up and occupied herself with her e-reader. Some time around nine-thirty in the morning, Parker heard the snowmobile. She went out to the kitchen and poured herself another cup of coffee. Jarod came in, looking pale and exhausted. He didn’t seem to notice her at first, occupied as he was with his snow suit. He swayed dangerously as he tried to get it off, revealing a dark stain on his shirt.

“Jarod, you’re bleeding,” she pointed out.

“Yeah,” he said, his words slurring. “’M fine.”

“You’re not fine,” she said. “You’re bleeding.”

“No, ’s fine,” he said, waving a hand and stumbling toward the other room. “Just a graze.”

“You were shot at?”

Jarod fell onto his bed without even taking off his shoes. It was worrying to see him so dazed. “There were Sweepers, buh’s fine, jus’ need to sleep.”

“Under normal circumstances, I’d walk away now,” Parker said, irritated. “But you dying is not in my best interests, believe it or not, so shut up and let me look at it.”

Jarod looked confused. “But—” He shook his head. “Fine,” he said. Parker went to the bathroom for the first aid kit and when she came back, Jarod was nearly asleep.

“Wake up, Jarod,” she growled, snapping her fingers. “Wake up!”

“Hmm?” he said. His eyelids were heavy, and Parker panicked. She cut the shirt rather than deal with the hassle of undressing him, and the wound in his side was clearly not a graze.

“Some graze,” Parker said, steeling herself against the sight of so much blood. She cleaned it quickly and carefully. Jarod yelped when she put pressure on it. “Yeah, well, getting shot isn’t a walk in the park.”

“You would—ah—you would know.” The pain seemed to have cleared his head.

“Shot in the back… not the most fun I’ve had,” she said, unwrapping another pack of gauze. Her hands were red now, and she’d have a hell of a time getting them clean again. The bleeding had slowed, but if she didn’t do something soon, he’d faint from blood loss.

“Stitches,” Jarod said.

“No,” Parker said. “No way. I am _not_ —no.”

“I can’t,” Jarod said, squeezing his eyes shut. “Can’t do it.”

“I’m not even qualified,” Parker said.

Jarod’s breathing was getting shallower by the minute. “Your mom—didn’t she teach you—to sew?”

“That’s different! I mended a _shirt_ , Jarod, not a human being.”

“Shirt—skin—what’s the—difference?” Jarod looked at her sideways and gave her a weak smile that she supposed was meant to reassure her. “It’s not—hard. Done it—lots of times.”

“Don’t you want something to numb it?”

Jarod made a face. “Nah. Maybe—after.”

“Jarod, I can’t—” Parker felt her pulse quicken, panic setting in with all the pressure. She looked away. “I can’t.”

“You can—please.”

The last word came out almost as a sob, and Parker’s eyes flicked back to Jarod, pale as a sheet and still bleeding. She gritted her teeth, took the needle and sutures out of the kit, and pretended it was just another shirt in need of mending.

Pretending Jarod’s side was a shirt didn’t help; the textures of flesh and fabric were nothing alike, and the technique wasn’t anywhere near the same. But knowing that she’d have no protection from the Centre if he died—well, that certainly helped her finish the sutures. She cleaned him up afterward, but that was only to make sure there were no other cuts for him to bleed from. If, after she cleaned him up and put on fresh bandages, she removed the blankets he’d bled on, that was _only_ to keep out infection. And if she put some of her blankets over him, well, that was only because he’d freeze to death without covers and _his_ had to go in the  laundry.

He’d passed out as soon as she’d finished stitching him up, and Parker wondered why he hadn’t stopped in town; had he been shot at in town? His lips looked blue, and when Parker touched his forehead, he felt a little cold. She turned up the heater a bit more, even though it meant shedding the robe she usually wore around the house. She got a chair from the kitchen and her e-reader from her bedside table and waited for him to wake up.

* * *

Parker was in the kitchen fixing something to eat when she heard Jarod stir. By the time she’d shut off the stove, balanced the food on her plate, and taken it and a cup of coffee into the other room, Jarod was mostly awake.

“How long was I out?” he asked.

“Most of the day,” Parker said.

Jarod pulled the blankets down and inspected the bandage on his side. “Not bad,” he said. “You even changed the sheets.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Parker snarled. “You’re the only thing standing between me and the Centre.”

Jarod stared intently at the blankets. “Yeah. There was a Sweeper,” he said. “At the airpark.”

“What?” Was it possible they had followed Jarod?

“He didn’t follow me,” Jarod said. “But it’s possible the Centre knows you’re out here somewhere.” He closed his eyes, and Parker could see a thin layer of sweat on his forehead.

“Well, they haven’t shown up yet,” Parker said, putting on a brave face.

Jarod’s answering smile was weak. Parker had almost forgotten he was still recovering from significant blood loss and a gunshot wound.

“Do you need anything?” she asked stiffly.

“Half a pint of blood would be great,” Jarod said.

“You’re not having mine,” Parker said. “I can get you half a pint of water and some painkillers.”

“Good enough,” Jarod mumbled. “And turn up the heater? It’s a little chilly in here.”

Parker dug a few blankets out of the dryer, still warm, and threw them over Jarod before going to the kitchen for the water and medicine. She had to wake Jarod when she got back. He took the painkillers with some effort, downed the rest of the water, and laid back, closing his eyes again. “It’s going to storm tonight,” he said. “You should go to bed.”

“I’m fine,” Parker lied.

“Last time you slept?” Jarod asked.

“I’m fine,” Parker repeated.

“I’m just going to sleep for a few hours. You should do the same. I’ll scream at the top of my lungs when I wake up, okay?”

“Just go to sleep, Jarod, before you black out again.”

Jarod didn’t respond, but his breathing slowed and evened out into the measured tempo of sleep. Parker ate and finished her cup of coffee, then went to do dishes. She considered going to take a nap, but she hadn’t slept in two days, and no matter how much she intended to sleep for only a few hours, she knew she’d sleep for half a day if she had the chance.

After only a few minutes in her chair, Parker was struggling to keep her eyes open. It wasn’t comfortable enough for an entire night, but it wouldn’t be too bad for a short nap…

* * *

The storm woke Jarod first. He reached over with some effort and turned on the lamp. Parker was asleep in the chair; the storm must have just started, or she was more exhausted than she’d let on, because there were no signs of nightmares. He pushed back the covers and examined his bandage. He’d managed not to bleed through it yet, but he hadn’t really moved anywhere. He peeled the gauze away to inspect the cut. It would be a few days before he could do much, but he’d recovered from a good deal of the blood loss—he only felt slightly dizzy when he managed to sit up.

The wind whined through the chimney and the roof, and Parker stirred. A gust turned the whine into short scream, and Parker started awake, gripping the arm of the chair with one white-knuckled hand. She composed herself quickly when she realised Jarod was awake. “Feeling better?” she asked, her voice still carrying some of its usual edge.

“I’m alright,” he said. “Quick healer.” He shivered involuntarily; the storm was going to make the cabin colder than usual.

Parker got up and shrugged on her robe, then dug through Jarod’s drawers and tossed him a long-sleeved shirt. He smirked when she left for the kitchen; she was taking care of him, and though he knew she’d never admit it—and he certainly wasn’t about to call her on it—she was doing much more than the bare minimum required to keep him alive. He could have survived without a shirt, what with all the blankets she’d piled on top of him. She’d brought him painkillers and water, and had insisted on sitting with him while he slept off the worst. She was being _nice_. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do.

She came back from the kitchen with a glass of water and more painkillers, and Jarod didn’t make any comments. She still wore an air of indifference, still told herself she was only taking care of her protection from the Centre.

“So what happened?” she asked. “You get in trouble on your mission?”

Jarod shook his head, downing the painkillers. “A couple of Sweepers followed me here in a little jet. They got a few shots off before I—” Self-defense, he thought. They would have killed him _and_ Parker otherwise. “Before I got them.”

“Are you sure they were dead?” she asked. She sounded genuinely concerned, and for good reason—if they’d survived, the Centre would be hovering over the cabin by now, if they hadn’t already picked up both Parker and Jarod.

“Yeah,” he said, staring into his water glass. “We’re still safe up here.”

Parker stiffened at his ‘ _we_ ’, but Jarod barely even noticed. The wind howled outside and the trees nearest the cabin slapped their branches against the roof.

“It’s going to be one hell of a storm,” Jarod commented.

“Your powers of deduction are improving,” Parker replied dryly.

“We’ll have to be ready to leave the moment it lets up.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Angelo’s going to keep the children safe as long as possible, but they won’t be able to hide forever.”

“The _children_? What _children_?”

“The new Pretenders,” Jarod said, acid rising in his throat at the thought. “New and improved,” he remarked in a mockingly light tone. “They were bred, born, and raised in the Centre. They don’t even have names.”

“And what _exactly_ do you plan to _do_ with these children?” Parker asked.

“I’ve got a plan.”

Parker rolled her eyes. “Of course Wonder Boy has a plan.”

“You don’t have to sit here,” Jarod said.

“I’m fine,” Parker sneered.

“Do you remember the island storm?”

“Are you talking about the time we stayed with the crazy blind woman, or the time you interrupted my vacation?”

“The latter,” he answered.

She nodded. “I’m not doing that again.”

Jarod shrugged with his good shoulder. “Suit yourself. If you change your mind, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m going to bed. Holler if you need anything.” She got up and walked into her room, and Jarod fell back into his pillows. It would be a long, long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The island storm Parker refers to in this chapter ("the time you interrupted my vacation") is [this story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/692453).


	31. Chapter 31

When they were safely out of range of the airport, Castle pulled over and shifted the car into park. Kate looked at him and saw a long night of worry etched in his brow. She took his hand and smiled. “I’m okay, Castle,” she said. “No cuts, no gunshot wounds, no blood.”

Castle leaned across the center console and kissed Kate briefly. He shifted back into drive and pulled out into the empty street. They were silent for the entire ride, and when Castle didn’t turn onto Kate’s street, she didn’t complain. They held hands in the elevator, and though Kate had expected Castle to be very ‘hands-on’, he made no moves other than refusing to let go of her hand even to unlock the door. He dropped her bag on the sofa and pulled her into his arms.

Kate leaned her head against his chest.

“I think that’s enough dumb stunts for at least a few years,” Castle said. “Jumping off of buildings, getting shot by snipers, infiltrating massive intelligence corporations—you gotta give me a break, Kate.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “Okay.” She attempted to extricate herself, but he kept his arms around her. She pushed his arms away, taking his hands in hers. “I _really_ need a shower,” she said. “I smell like  ventilation shafts and sea water.”

“Do you need help with that?” he asked, his usual playful smirk returning.

“Not this time, Castle,” she said, pulling the elastic out of her hair and digging through her bag for a hairbrush. “I’ll only be a couple of minutes.” She went into his bedroom, found her stash of clean clothes, and then went into the bathroom.

When Kate came out of the bathroom eight minutes later, fresh and clean, Castle was stretched out on the bed, asleep in his t-shirt and sweats. Kate threw her dirty clothes in the hamper and crawled into bed next to him.

He woke up long enough to pull her close to him—much too close for Kate’s comfort. “Castle,” she murmured, running her fingers through his hair. He muttered something inaudible, and Kate prodded him in the shoulder. “Castle, you’re smothering me.”

“Huh?” he said, waking up a little. “Sorry.” He let her retreat, and she moved back far enough that she could sleep comfortably, but not an inch farther. She laced her fingers in his, and two minutes later, she was fast asleep.

Castle was still in bed next to her when she woke up, but the pout on his face told Kate he’d been awake for a while.

“Time’s it?” she mumbled.

“Three in the afternoon.”

Kate jumped. “Shit! I’ve got to—”

“No, you don’t,” he said. He picked up the remote from the night table and flicked on the TV. The news reporter was talking to a woman holding a toddler, and her husband.

_“He was kidnapped how long ago?”_

_“Eight months. We thought we’d never see him again.”_

Castle flipped the channel to a different news station, where a reporter’s voice narrated a helicopter shot of the building Kate had infiltrated a little more than twelve hours before.

“Esposito called and I told him you got food poisoning from the takeout last night, and you’d be back to work tomorrow.”

“We’re in the middle of a case, Castle,” Kate said, throwing the covers off. “I can’t just _not_ go to work.”

Castle got up and stood between her and the doorway. “Listen to me,” he said, his hands on her shoulders. “You just helped bring down a massive global corporation that specializes in killing people for money, and now that corporation is in its death throes. You think it’s not going to lash out at anyone and everyone it can link to its death? Why do you think your pal Jarod’s not in New York?”

“Castle, I’m going to the _precinct_. I’ll be surrounded by people I know—by my _friends_.”

“Yeah, and how many people in that place do you honestly trust with your life?”

Kate quietly slid her best interrogator’s poker face on. “All of them, Castle. I have to. It’s my _job_.”

Castle pouted. “Fine, but if you go to the precinct, I’m going with you.”

“No, you—”

“Why not? You’re going. Or do you not trust those people with _my_ life?”

“I—” Kate scowled. “Fine. But I’m _not_ abandoning this case.” She pushed past him to the kitchen and called Esposito.

“Hey, Beckett! How’s the, uh, _food poisoning_?” he smirked.

“I’m fine, Espo. Where are we?”

Esposito gave her a rundown of the last twelve hours or so on the case, and then asked, “Have you seen the news?”

“Yeah,” Kate said.

“I bet Castle’s having a heyday with it.” Esposito chuckled.

“He’s pretty riveted,” she answered. Castle flicked on the TV in the living room and let it drone on about the Centre and ‘Chameleon’, the mysterious and completely fictional group allegedly responsible for its downfall. “Listen,” she added quietly while Castle went into the pantry for dinner ingredients. “You and Ryan bring me those case files later, okay?”

“I can just email them to—“

“No. Bring me the case files when you’re off. Both of you.”

“Beckett—”

Kate rolled her eyes. “I have lasagna.”

“You got it, boss.”

“Did I hear something about lasagna?” Castle asked when Kate hung up. He had a package of pasta sheets in one hand and a can of tomato paste in the other.

“The boys are coming over later with case files.”

“They could have just—”

“Yeah, I know,” Kate interrupted. “But they deserve to know.”

Castle set the food on the counter. He opened his mouth to question her, then stopped, thought better of it, and went back to making lasagna.

* * *

Jarod struggled out of bed a few hours later and shuffled his way to the bathroom and then to the kitchen. He made himself a sandwich with one hand, and wolfed it down, chasing it with a large glass of water. The storm went on outside, and the thunder picked up as Jarod washed and dried his plate. He heard Parker scream and shuffled into her room. She started awake, gasping, when he shook her. He knew her nightmares were getting steadily worse. He’d known it for a long time, but her poor sleep only made her more irritable, and he’d never confronted her about it.

He’d never confronted her about anything, really. Their relationship was built on circumlocution, unanswered questions, and back-door banter. “They’re getting worse,” he said, because talking in circles wouldn’t help her.

“Wow,” she bit, “you really are a genius.” She turned away from him, pulling the covers up to her chin.

“What was it this time?” he asked.

She shot him a glare, as if she was offended that he knew the contents of her nightmares, even though he’d never asked her about them. “Carthis,” she said tersely. “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”

Jarod shrugged with his good shoulder and then gestured to his seat on the edge of her mattress. “Technically, I am.”

She didn’t look amused. “Go back to bed, Jarod. I’m fine.”

He stayed where he was for a moment, trying to decide if it wouldn’t be better to persist, but he didn’t want to aggravate her—not now. He got to his feet and shuffled to the partition. “Good night,” he said on his way out.

“Yeah,” she replied quietly as he pulled the panel closed behind him.

He fell asleep almost as soon as he laid down, and woke laterto Parker’s shouts. He was rapidly getting his strength back, and he could walk at an almost-normal pace now. When he woke her and asked what the nightmare was, she told him it was Carthis again.

“I don’t know when the storm will let up,” he said.

She looked tired; the cold sweat of her nightmares had dampened the hair around her face. “Does it matter?” she asked, her usual snap dulled by her tiredness.

He didn’t say anything for a while. There wasn’t much to say. She was constantly irritable, and he was too fond of his body parts to be enthusiastic about confronting her. But she hadn’t killed him yet, and she probably wouldn’t kill him tonight, so he said, “Is there anything I can do?”

Parker snorted. “You’ve done plenty,” she sneered. “I don’t need any help from you, thanks.”

He was used to harsh remarks; he hadn’t exactly lived a cushioned life. But her words hurt worse than his gunshot wound. He stood up. “Okay,” he said, nodding. “I’m going back to bed. Holler if you need anything.”

As he climbed back into bed, he wished he hadn’t said the last part. She would holler in her sleep, and then scorn him for trying to help her. It was a conundrum he, genius Pretender, couldn’t solve. He could become anyone, step into any shoes, see through any pair of eyes except hers. It bothered him; it intrigued him.

The storm had let up a little the next time she woke him up, but when he shook her awake, the dream clung to her—and she to him—longer than usual. When she came to, her hands were fisted in his shirt, and he held her by the waist. She released her death grip as soon as she realized she had it, but she still looked shaken.

“Still Carthis?” he asked, but she shook her head. She refused to tell him what it had been. “The storm should clear by tomorrow,” he offered as consolation, even though she wouldn’t care.

“Great,” she replied tonelessly. She sounded too tired to be snappish. She yanked her covers back up to her chin. After a minute and a half of tense silence, she bit, “Why are you still here?”

“I don’t know,” he told her honestly. “You’ve made it abundantly clear that there’s nothing I can do to help, but I’d still like to.”

“Yeah, well, I’d like to spend the rest of my life on a Caribbean beach sipping mojitos and getting skin cancer, but that’s not going to happen either. Go back to bed.”

“No.”

“Am I going to have to shoot you?”

“Yes.”

Parker glared at him. “Why are you doing this?”

“I think you know,” he said.

Parker rolled her eyes and turned away from him. After half a minute of silence, Jarod got up and went to the kitchen for a glass of water and another round of painkillers. He brought a sleeping pill and a glass of water for Parker—not that it would do much. “Thanks,” she grumbled, downing the pill and all ten ounces of water. He took the empty tumbler back to the kitchen. When he returned to Parker’s room, she was facing away from him, covers pulled up, but she had moved to the far side of the bed.

Jarod sat on the bed, cautious. He called her name, her first name, quietly, questioningly. She shrugged one shoulder, and didn’t throw off his hand when he touched her arm. She would deny it later, of course, but when he laid down next to her and pulled a blanket over himself, he could have sworn she shifted closer to him. He laid awake for hours, listening to the steady, even rhythm of her breathing as she slept.


	32. Chapter 32

Kate’s phone buzzed. Jarod’s message was short, as usual: _ETA thirty minutes_. He’d gone on a rescue mission with Parker to what was left of the Centre. He hadn’t said why they were going, and Parker had claimed not to know.

“Half an hour,” Kate told Castle.

“Still don’t know what they’re up to?” Castle asked.

Kate shook her head. “It’s got to be something big; they’ve been gone for a while.”

Castle smirked, but Kate cut him off with a look. “Grow up, Castle,” she said, rolling her eyes. He’d commented after dinner last night—after Jarod and Parker had left—on the astonishing amount of unresolved tension between the two of them.

He grinned wider and went to the kitchen to start dinner while Kate did some paperwork on a recently-closed NYPD case.

Forty minutes later, the doorbell rang. Kate went to answer it. “Hey, where have you—” She stopped. Jarod and Parker were each carrying a small body dressed in a grey jumpsuit. A sleepy child clung to Jarod’s free hand. Kate stood aside and let them in, easing the door closed and locking the deadbolt. “Jarod, what—?”

“You’ve been busy,” Castle remarked, crouching down in front of the little girl. “Hello,” he said.

She peeked out from behind her dark hair and said, “Hello.”

“I’m Rick,” Castle said, holding out his hand. She stared at it.

“They weren’t given names,” Jarod explained, “but I have their records. There might be something in the files to tell us who they are.”

Kate was staring at the little girl. “It’s her,” she breathed. “The girl I saw in Sublevel Five.”

The girl backed away from Kate and looked up at Jarod. “You said the Centre was all gone,” she said fearfully, as if she’d been grievously betrayed.

“This is Kate,” Jarod explained. “She’s my friend. She helped me make sure there was no more Centre.”

Kate crouched in front of the girl from Sublevel Five.

“Is this a safehouse?” the girl asked.

“Yes,” Kate said. “You’re safe here.”

“Do you have somewhere for them to sleep?” Jarod asked. “I had to wake them out of bed.”

“Yeah.” Castle took the little body—a girl—from Parker’s arms, and Jarod carried the other little one—a boy—into Castle’s room. Kate watched them go, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Parker watching, too.

“If I didn’t know better,” Kate said, “I’d say you were attached to that little girl.”

Parker shot Kate a glare that Kate interpreted as an affirmative _._

Jarod came back from the bedroom. To the untrained eye, Kate supposed he might look alright, but she’d dealt with Jarod enough in the last couple of months to know better. He was uneasy. Kate invited them into the kitchen and served a very late dinner.

* * *

Jarod stared at the stack of red folders while he talked. “Even before I escaped, the Centre had plans to create Pretenders from scratch. They were Project Alpha, the first Pretenders to grow up without parents or family. When Project Gemini failed, they accelerated Project Alpha and produced Alpha One, Alpha Two, and Alpha Three.”

“How did they manage _that_?” Castle asked. “Test tubes and computer sequencing?”

Jarod shook his head. “Nothing that complex. They were carried to term via surrogate mothers, and their genetic material was mixed in a lab and came from genetic—genetic donors.”

Even a deaf man wouldn’t have missed the falter in Jarod’s normally-flawless speech. “Genetic donors?” Castle asked. “Did those donors _know_?”

Jarod shook his head. “No, they didn’t.”

“Who are the donors?” Parker asked, speaking for the first time since she arrived.

Jarod’s pause was noticeably longer than necessary. “I don’t think—”

“Who. Are. The. Donors?” Parker repeated.

The tension in the room was palpable now, and Castle tried to piece together what he was missing. The children had been presumably created to be Pretenders. If that was the case, then the material would have had to come from—oh. Castle nudged Kate with his arm. They exchanged glances, and Castle saw the pieces fall together in Kate’s mind as well. “It doesn’t matter,” Kate said. “Clearly the donors don’t _know_ about them.”

“The donors are only listed as numbers in the files. I had to cross-reference with the rest of the Centre files, and there’s a significant margin of error.”

If Parker had been carrying anything more dangerous than a set of car keys, Castle was sure she would have shot Jarod by now.

“Donors, Jarod,” Parker snarled.

Castle could already guess, but it was still no less surprising to hear the answer.

“Alpha One’s donors are listed as J. Beckett and J. Beckett,” Jarod said. He looked at Kate. “Your sister.”

Castle instinctively put an arm around Kate. She leaned heavily against him.

“Alpha Two’s donors are listed as C. Parker and M. Charles.”

“Ethan,” Parker commented. “They made another Ethan.”

“Alpha Three’s records aren’t as clear, but…” Jarod looked at Parker. “They link back to my file and your file.”

The look on Parker’s face changed to disbelief, and then shock. “Oh, _hell no_.”

“The best of the best,” Jarod said. “She was supposed to be the ultimate in Pretender technology.”

“And what now?” Kate asked. “You’re pretty good at a lot of things, but even _you_ can’t raise three of _them_.”

Castle cleared his throat.

“Castle,” Kate said gravely.

He shook his head. “I’m serious. They can stay here. There’s plenty of room, and besides, it’s been too quiet around here.”

Kate crossed her arms. “Castle, there are _three_ of them, and they’re not all going to behave like Alexis.”

“Does anyone have a better suggestion?”

Jarod glanced at Parker and then said, “Alpha Three is my responsibility,” he said. “She’s my daughter, technically.”

Parker didn’t seem to be paying attention.

“Castle and I can take care of the other two,” Kate said.

“Only if we call them something other than Alpha One and Alpha Two,” Castle commented. “It feels too much like a Dr. Seuss book.”

“Johanna,” Kate said. She didn’t need to explain why.

“And Ethan,” Castle added.

There was a pause, and Jarod said, “Helen.”

Castle blinked. “Helen?”

Parker was glaring at Jarod now, his suggestion having caught her attention. “Helen of Troy was the daughter of the goddess Nemesis,” she said coldly.

Castle still didn’t understand, but Kate seemed to. He broke the silence by offering to take the empty dinner dishes away. Kate jumped in to help, and they left Jarod and Parker alone in the dining room. “Nemesis?” Castle asked.

“The dedication in _Chameleon_ ,” Kate said, and the pieces clattered together.

Castle filled the sink with hot water and rolled up his sleeves. “When do you think they’ll figure it out?”

“I think they already have. They just don’t want to admit it.”

“Gee, sounds familiar,” he joked, and Kate rolled her eyes.

* * *

One minute, there were dishes between them and other people to talk to; the next, there was only Jarod, Parker, and three red files. He remembered an incident when there had been a different set of three red files. Parker had been wound up then, too.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be Helen.”

Parker shook her head. “Do what you want.”

Jarod frowned. “She’s yours, too, you know. If you want.”

Parker snorted. “Sure.”

He rarely got frustrated with her—he understood her point of view, and most of her annoyance with him was his own doing anyway—but now he could feel himself losing his calm, collected exterior. He got up and walked into the living room, staring out the window at the lights of New York City.

“Don’t think you can just walk away, Monkey Boy,” Parker snapped behind him.

Jarod didn’t turn around. He was getting too worked up; he had to clear his head before he did something irrational or stupid.

She stood beside him, arms crossed over her chest. He looked at her reflection in the window, then turned to face her.

He said her name, and in it was an apology and a plea, all wrapped up in a few syllables he’d learned from the girl he’d always loved. He knew he ought to give her his apology in more words, and his plea in the form of a question. That was the way to deal with this rationally.

“Jarod,” she said, but there was none of her usual coldness. She sounded tired.

He did something stupid then, something colossally stupid: he kissed her. She responded, but not in the way he’d expected. She kissed him, too, and then pushed him away with only minimal force. “I’m sorry,” he said, at the same time she said quietly,

“I’m scared.”

“Scared of what?”

Parker snorted. “Look, I know you tore out their infrastructure and flooded twenty sublevels, but Raines and Lyle and the Triumvirate are all still out there. So is my father. They’ll be back, Jarod. And you know where they’ll go first.”

Jarod shrugged. “Hiding’s not as hard as it sounds.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, maybe for _you_.”

“Come with me,” he said. “Three of us, it’ll be a piece of cake.”

“And what about Raines? My brother?”

“It’s your choice,” Jarod said. “I’m not going to kidnap you this time.”

“Oh, you’re not? Gee, _thanks_. It’s nice to know you care about my sanity.”

Jarod took a long look at her, and then turned back to the window. He didn’t say anything; there was nothing for him to say. He had always cared about her. If she didn’t know it by now, there were no words in the universe that would convince her of it.

She walked away, and he heard her give her excuses to Kate and Castle. After another minute of staring out the window, he did the same, promised to be back in the morning for Helen, and then went out to the street where they’d miraculously found a place to park. Parker was in the passenger seat, waiting.

“I get to pick the curtains,” was all she said.


	33. Epilogue

This, Castle decided, was perfect. He kept expecting to wake up from this dream, and the fact that he never did only made it that much better. Kate was still asleep next to him—it was only seven in the morning, after all—and he could hear little feet pattering across the living room floor.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, grinning. Two pairs of feet ran into the room, and a small body climbed up onto the bed and tackled Castle. Castle opened his eyes to find a pair of dark brown eyes and an enormous grin staring back at him. “Papa!” Ethan screeched.

“Hey, buddy,” Castle laughed. “You’re up early.”

“Gonna visit Grandpa today?” Ethan asked.

“Yeah, buddy. But you’ll have to wake Mama first.”

Ethan giggled and rolled off of Castle to prod Kate awake. Castle looked to the door, where the other pair of feet stood quietly. The moment her bright eyes met Castle’s, she sprinted for the bed and flung herself onto Castle. “Morning, Papa,” she said into his neck.

“Morning, Joey,” Castle said, hugging her close to him. Even though she looked like a miniature version of Kate, Castle and Johanna had shared a unique closeness since the first night the little girl had spent at the loft. Though they weren’t _his_ in the basest sense of the word, Castle loved them as much as if they were his own flesh and blood. He had offered to take care of them at the loft before he’d even really met them, but he never regretted his offer even for a second.

Kate’s fingers brushed Castle’s shoulder and he looked at her, smiling. He thought about how he’d once wanted nothing more than to raise kids with her, and even though Ethan and Johanna were only theirs by law (or at least by Jarod’s sleight of hand), he was perfectly content.

Johanna rested her head on Castle’s chest and reached her fingers toward Kate. Kate grabbed them with her own and grinned. Johanna slid off of Castle and crawled over to snuggle next to Kate. “Hi, Mama.”

“Hi, Jo,” Kate said. It was a little over a year since Jarod had brought Ethan and Johanna to them, and they had become quite the family. The first few months had been rough: Ethan and Johanna had trouble adjusting to normal life, and Kate and Castle had trouble adjusting to life as parents. Kate had resisted moving in, even though she rarely went to her apartment, and Castle had finally convinced her by getting on one knee and proposing.

“Mama, can we go visit Grandma Jo?”

“We can go tomorrow,” Kate said. “We made plans to visit Grandpa today.”

Ethan squealed. “Papa, I wanna see Grandpa!”

“Well,” Castle said, sitting up and catching Ethan before he jumped off the bed, “I guess we’d better get started, then.” He turned Ethan upside down and tickled the boy’s knees. Ethan giggled and screeched all the way up the stairs. Castle let him down in the hallway and Ethan scampered into his room.

The big bed that had inhabited the room when it was a guest room had been exchanged for a twin bed. The room was much the same as it had been, but without the larger bed taking up the middle of the room, it seemed so much more spacious. Castle stepped around building toys and half-finished structures to the dresser and dug out some clothes for Ethan, who was working on what appeared to be a LEGO replica of the skyscraper visible out Ethan’s bedroom window.

“Come on, bud,” Castle said. He sometimes forgot that Ethan had been engineered, a project to create a genius unlike any other, but he never forgot that Ethan was a stubborn little boy. “Gotta get dressed.”

Ethan said nothing. He’d become intensely focused on his project. It was something that both Ethan and Johanna—and Helen as well, according to Parker—did rather frequently, and no one disagreed when Castle had said they needed to be gently trained away from their “Alpha episodes.”

Sometimes it was difficult to coax them out of their fervor, and sometimes, like this one, it was simple. “You gotta get dressed before we can go see Grandpa,” Castle said.

Ethan was so deep in concentration already that it took a few seconds for him to respond. “Grandpa!” he said excitedly. He snapped a block onto the tower and stood up, holding up his arms. “Gotta get dressed!”

Castle helped Ethan out of his pajamas and into a pair of jeans and a plain t-shirt. “Go put your dirties in the laundry,” he said.

“Breakfast!” Ethan said.

“After you put your dirties in the laundry.”

Ethan scampered out of the room, singing, “Dirties in the laundry, dir-r-r-ties in the laundry, wash ‘em out and make ‘em shiny ‘gain.”

Castle went down to the kitchen and took out eggs, cheese, bread and bacon. Ethan ran into the kitchen and tried to climb up Castle’s legs.

“Whoa, buddy!” Castle laughed, setting the breakfast ingredients on the counter. “Whatcha doing?”

“I wanna help!” Ethan said.

“Do you want to do the toast?” Castle asked.

Ethan nodded and let go of Castle’s leg. “Toast!”

Castle set the toaster on the counter and plugged it in. “Go sit in your seat, and I’ll give you the bread to toast.” Ethan climbed up onto a barstool and Castle handed him the loaf of bread. “Everyone gets two except Joey, remember?”

Ethan nodded and counted slices of bread as he put them in the toaster. “One for Mama, two for Mama, three for Papa, four for Papa.” Ethan tried to push the lever down, but it buzzed angrily. Ethan jumped, nearly falling off his chair. He looked terrified.

“It’s okay, bud. It wasn’t ready for the toast, that’s all. You can try it again.”

Ethan leaned away from the toaster this time, but the lever went down smoothly and without protest. Ethan patted the side of the toaster. “Good toaster.”

Ethan watched the toast, and Castle could see his excitement growing at the suspense. Castle started two pans heating and mixed eggs and cheese in a bowl.

As he served eggs, bacon, and toast onto plates, he was certain that nothing could be more perfect than this.

* * *

**March 13, 2013**

In a small suburb in mainland New York, Mary Nelson watches her new neighbors, pretending to water her flowers. It’s overcast, and the clouds are darker today than they were yesterday. It’s certainly going to rain. There’s a duffel bag sitting on the Parkers’ porch, and the man, Jared, is pushing a little girl in the child swing that’s hanging from the tree in the front yard. The woman, Miranda, comes out of the house, carrying a red notebook under one arm.

“Jared,” she says, and he stops the swing. The little girl starts to fuss, but Jared picks her up and tosses her in the air, and she giggles.

“It’s time to go,” he says, trading the little girl for the notebook.

Ten seconds go by, and Mary Nelson thinks the Parkers are going to stand there staring at each other forever.

“Come back in one piece, or I’ll have to track you down and shoot you,” she says. “And I don’t think Helen would appreciate that.”

Mary Nelson can’t see Jared’s face any more, but his shoulders straighten. He kisses Helen’s forehead, and then, hesitantly, Miranda’s lips. They exchange no more words, and Jared throws his duffel in the back seat of the car, starts it, and drives away. Miranda and Helen walk to the curb and wave, and when the car is out of sight, they go into the house.

 

**May 25, 2013**

Mary Nelson wonders what all the origami birds on the Parkers’ front porch are for.

“They’re for Daddy,” Helen tells her. “One for every day he’s away.”

 

**July 4, 2013**

Mary Nelson puts up her American flag, and a well-dressed couple with two young children arrive at the Parkers’ house. The man looks like the author of Mary’s favorite mystery series.

 

**August 18, 2013**

A small boy is found on the side of a mountain road in the Sierras. A quarter of a mile away, a search party finds a man who has been severely mauled by a grizzly bear.

 

**October 2, 2013**

_Chameleon_ , the blockbuster science fiction dystopian novel, is available in fourteen languages. Worldwide sales reach three million copies.

 

**November 17, 2013**

NuGenesis is shut down by the United States government, quietly and completely.

 

**December 24, 2013**

Mary Nelson takes a fruitcake to the Parkers’ house for Christmas. The paper birds that had been on the porch are now hung throughout the living room and on the small Christmas tree. There are two hundred eighty-six birds, according to Helen. Mary Nelson praises the four-year-old on her counting skills.

 

**January 12, 2014**

Shooting begins on the film adaptation of _Chameleon_.

 

**February 9, 2014**

On an island governed by a country which has no extradition treaties with anyone, four charred skeletons are found in a gutted vacation house of considerable size. Evidence suggests that the fire was started by an oxygen tank.

 

**March 13, 2014**

Mary Nelson finds a funny-looking origami bird in her mailbox. Next door, three hundred sixty-five more paper birds of all colors and sizes hang from the porch. She takes the bird next door.

Miranda answers the door. 

“Hello, dear. I think little Helen left something in my mailbox.”

Miranda ignores the bird and walks out of the house, brushing past Mary Nelson. A car rounds the corner. “Helen!” Miranda calls.

Helen, who has grown a good deal over the last year, runs out of the house as the car pulls into the driveway. Jared Parker gets out of the car, looking older than when Mary Nelson saw him last, and tired. A young man, the spitting image of a Jared perhaps twenty-five years younger, gets out of the passenger side. There’s a touching reunion in the driveway: Jared and Miranda share the kind of kiss that military wives like Mary Nelson know all too well, Helen climbs up Jared’s legs, and Miranda embraces the young Jared duplicate.

On their way into the house, Jared stops and says, “Thank you, Mrs. Nelson.”

“You’re welcome, dear,” Mary Nelson replies automatically, and then the four of them are gone. She shakes her head and goes back to her house to make a cup of tea. She sets the origami bird on the mantlepiece, and doesn’t bother wondering how it had gotten into _her_ mailbox.


End file.
